Advertising Using Social Networking Sites

As a category, social networking sites are probably the most widely used sites on the internet after search engines. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are mentioned as the power houses of the internet, along with Google. So if you're trying to market a business online, you can't overlook their potential as a small business marketing tool.

Almost everyone that is online now has a Facebook profile or a Twitter account, and each of these people can be considered a potential customer. By trying to find ways to promote your products on those sites, you are going to be reaching many more customers than you would if you just stuck to other methods of online marketing, like SEO. This isn't a recommendation that those methods be abandoned, but rather a suggestion that you can create an even more successful business by augmenting your existing internet marketing campaign so that it includes these more social advertising opportunities.

There are two ways to boost your sales through social networking sites. The first is to use the sites as a marketing tool and create profiles for your business on these sites. This is a great way to interact with your customers, grow trust in your brand, and to start and open an engaging dialogue about your services and niche with the public.

Advertising Using Social Networking Sites

If you choose to do this on Facebook, you will set up a business page, rather than a normal profile. There is no such distinction on Twitter. Then on Facebook, rather than having people become friends with your business like they would with your personal profile, they will 'like' your business page instead. This is a great way to build a following. On Twitter, you would set up and run a business profile similar to how you would a personal.

There are also paid advertising options that you can explore in the realm of social networking. Because social networking is still relatively new in terms of the life of the internet, there is still likely going to be more growth and development in how these advertising models work. As it is, though, there are ways that you can pay to advertise your products through social networks; most notably and powerfully, through Facebook.

Facebook has a powerful system for buying advertising. This works on a system like that used by the major search engines; a pay per click system. This means that you will bid a certain amount that you want to pay each time a person clicks on your ad. You will then only pay when someone actually clicks through to your ad, not just when your ad is displayed. This is a great model for at least ensuring that your message is being seen.

The great aspect of these ads is like everything else on social networking sites, they're social. If someone likes an ad that you've posted, they can actually 'like' it. This will get it to show up their news feed, and the news feeds of their friends, who will then hopefully click on the link, 'like' it, and repeat the process. This social aspect of advertising is what makes the process of advertising with Facebook so appealing. People are also much more likely to trust a product or company when it comes recommended by a friend than if it was simply a random ad appearing on a web page.

With Facebook, there is also a strong market for advertising within applications, as well as on the primary pages. So, if you have an ad that is successful or an ad that is in a successful application, then the social sharing aspect of the site should make your message spread like wildfire.

Advertising Using Social Networking Sites
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Mark Matthews is a consultant for a successful small business marketing tool company and has expert knowledge of selling online marketing. Download the free "Profiting from Local Online Marketing" report at http://www.localmarketingsource.com

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The Influence Of The Internet On People's Social And Psychological Realities

The influence of the Internet has caused a change in the way we communicate, learn and shop.

The Internet is probably most famous for the ability to spread information, fact or fiction. We were once limited to news editors of a local paper, then to national cable news. Now anyone can search the globe, visit local papers in foreign countries, and see the views of all sides. This ease of information has also brought with it a large amount of hoaxes, money schemes, and fallacies.

There is no question that easy access to the Internet, like the introduction of mail service and the invention of the telephone, has changed the nature of people's connection to others in their social world. Mail made possible connections among people without physical proximity, and the telephone facilitated communication among distant people, making rapid connections possible across long distances.

The Influence Of The Internet On People's Social And Psychological Realities

But has this communication revolution changed the pure nature of interpersonal and group processes?

On the one hand, since the primary use of the Internet is communication, some people might speculate that the Internet will have positive social consequences in people's everyday lives because it increases the frequency and quality of interpersonal communications among people. People with easy access to others would feel better connected and more strongly supported by others, leading to happiness and engagement in families, organizations, communities, and society more generally.

But, on the other hand, the ease of electronic communication may lead to weaker social ties, because people have less reason to leave their homes and actually interact face to face with other people. The Internet allows people to more easily work from their home, to form and sustain friendships and even romantic attachments from their home, to bank from their home, to vote and engage in political and social issue based discussions with others (from home).

In this variety of ways, Internet communications can potentially displace face-to-face communications. I think this point is important because psychologists in many researches have described and proved such face to face and telephone connections as being of higher quality, when viewed in terms of their contribution to satisfaction and well-being.
Reading a series of longitudinal and experimental studies (e.x. McKenna, Green, and Gleason), who test a theory of relationship formation on the Internet, these researchers directly address the argument that the psychological quality of Internet social interaction is lower than is the psychological quality of traditional face-to-face interaction.

Consider my own use. I've received several e-mail messages in the past hour. My boyfriend confirms the dinner for tonight. Even though it is weekend, my colleagues send me questions about the pending exam expects a quick answer. So does some graduate student from Europe, that I recently met on "MySpace" with an urgent request for a letter of recommendation. My friend Ksenija sends me an IM to tell me the latest news about her new love. And so on and so on...

I assume that I am also living a virtual life, and what's the most interesting of all, all of my friends online, are also my friends in real life. And if they weren't that in the past, I somehow managed to bring my cyber friends into my real life, so I could here in my real life enable real communication, real face-to-face "talks", real exchange of emotions, feelings of happiness, satisfaction and well-being. I'd say for me, the Internet is a great new way for doing old things.

So, what else conclusion can I bring except the one that Internet life cannot stand on itself without real-life communication. It is simple: If we understand the qualities of face-to-face communication that influence the impact of such communication on people and their social interaction, we would be able to predict the probable influence of any new communication technology. However, researchers show that people sooner or later convert their cyber contacts into more traditional face-to-face, the same as I do. People use the Internet, in other words to help them achieve their real-life goals. And rather than technology's changing people's social and psychological reality, in other words, people change their use of technology to facilitate their creation of a desired social reality.
Internet users should closely examine their behavior, to ensure that excessive time online will not negatively impact their personal well-being. We shouldn't throw our computers out the window, but neither should we charge on blindly into complete dependence on the Internet. As with many things in life, it seems that moderation and balance are key to maximizing the Internet's positive effect.

The Influence Of The Internet On People's Social And Psychological Realities
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Social Networking: Positive and Negative Aspects

Social Media and Social Networking sites are taking the internet by storm. Social media serves as a great platform to interact with friends, relatives or make new friends and meet new people online. Social Media sites are technologically advanced web interfaces offering content-exchange via short-messaging services, email or chat. In spite of its growing popularity, social media faces threats of hacking.

Although people find social media essential for retaining ties, it poses threat of vulnerabilities. Since social media consists of personal information, the users must be extremely careful while providing confidential information to these sites. Though some famous social networking sites, such as, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Google and Orkut, etc are extremely popular, they too face the threats to its users who are oblivious to safe internet practices. It is better not to give out passwords very easily, too much information sharing can often be counter-productive. It is advisable not to reveal your future travel plans on a social media site, your profile viewer with malicious intentions may plan to commit burglary in your apartment!

Therefore, privacy concerns must be of primary importance in networking. It is true that social networking provides an opportunity to develop inter-personal relationship, one need to be aware of the possible security threats. Especially, students often post detailed and specific information, on Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, etc, they can be more easily traced by strangers and even acquaintances!

Social Networking: Positive and Negative Aspects

Often they violate the school policy or the code of conduct by posting inappropriate pictures or information on their social networking profiles, so they are held accountable when the school administrators further investigate the matter. Moreover, other disadvantage is that students are often turned down job offers because of their information employers are finding out about students on their social networking sites! The employers take these images the students portray on these sites very seriously because it depicts the reflection of personal character!

Well, keeping aside the dangers of socializing on the net, it can be a good way to communicate with friends and relative, also to make connection to people with similar tastes, interests and goals! Thanks to social networking sites, because often meeting people personally has become the thing of the past. Thus, staying connected with classmates and colleagues is a major benefit of social networking sites!

It helps to stay connected with different cultural program, events listing and other information related to campus culture. What a great way to stay understand and stay connected to your campus community as a whole! Most importantly, these sites offer students the opportunity to create a positive self image.

Last but not the least, if you want to stay safe on the net, evaluate your profile account and postings frequently.Do not post your personal information, address or cell number. You can utilize and adjust your privacy settings so as to control who has the access to your personal information.

As it is said, everything has both bright and dark sides, we should be careful in using social networking sites constructively rather than destructively! So, enjoy, happy networking!

Social Networking: Positive and Negative Aspects
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The Author Kathy Fernandes is a freelance writer in local newspaper and magazines covering topics like networking and social media.

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The Importance of Social Networking in Our Society

Time flies quickly, a few years ago people tend to communicate using wired gadgets such as telephones or ham radios. Today, the internet has reshaped our world beyond our imagination. People now uses desktop or laptop computers not just for work but also for entertainment and communication as well.

Part of the ever growing popularity of the world wide web as a new means of communication is the advent of social networking sites. These are proprietary websites that can be used by common people to post personal profiles, pictures, videos, music and messages. Users of social networking sites can invite other "friends" to join their network to be able to view and share personal information on one another.

There are several social networking sites today, among the popular ones are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Most members of these sites are teenagers who just love the company of friends and other people. However, did you know how important social networking sites are?

The Importance of Social Networking in Our Society

1. Keeping in touch

By maintaining a profile on these sites, your loved ones, friends and distant relatives don't have to call you every time just to stay in touch with one another. One can take advantage of posting messages, images and personal videos of themselves for their loved ones to see over and over again. It's cheap, fast and real time technology available to everyone.

2. Job hunting

Several companies in the US and Europe are taking advantage of social networking sites to get competent employees. On the other hand, job applicants take advantage of these sites to post their resume and credentials. It's a great tool one can use in order to make a good impression to a company. If you're applying for a computer related job, it would be great to maintain a personal profile.

3. Emergency

Have you heard of several thousands of individuals saved using social networking sites? Twitter has been a great tool for many to relay messages to thousands of concerned citizens in a snap in times of tragedy and natural calamities. People who seek fund raising and donation can use Facebook or MySpace sites to call unto generous individuals.

Many people consider these sites as a work of the devil. It could be. However, one must realize that anything can become good or bad depending on the person's intentions. Social networking sites has shaped our world whether we like it or not and it will become an indispensable tool if it's used for good purposes.

The Importance of Social Networking in Our Society
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Impact of Social Media on Society

"Do you have Facebook?"
"Yes, of course. But I don't think you can find me, as there are too many people who have the same name as me. Try searching with my surname as well."
"Hey, you celebrated your birthday in K-Box, right? I saw the photos in your Facebook."
"Bro, I saw your comments about the YouTube video that I've posted in my blog. I'm happy that you are also deeply moved by the 'Dancing Peacock Man' as well."

Social media or "social networking" has almost become part of our daily lives and being tossed around over the past few years. It is like any other media such as newspaper, radio and television but it is far more than just about sharing information and ideas. Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs have facilitated creation and exchange of ideas so quickly and widely than the conventional media. The power of define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. It is no longer on the 5Cs (e.g. condominium, credit cards and car) that Singaporeans once talked about. Today, it is about the brand new Cs: creativity, communication, connection, creation (of new ideas and products), community (of shared interests), collaboration and (changing the game of) competition.

In January 2010, InSites Consulting has conducted an online survey with 2,884 consumers from over 14 countries between the ages of 18 to 55 years old on social networking. More than 90% of participants know at least 1 social networking site and 72% of participants are members of at least 1 social networking site. On the average, people have about 195 friends and they log in twice a day to social networking sites. However, 55% of the users cannot access their social network websites at work. In the past, not many adults were able to make more than 500 friends, but with social media, even a child or teenager can get to know more than 500 people in a few days by just clicking the mouse. Social media has devalued the traditional definition of "friend" where it means trust, support, compatible values, etc. Although we get to know more people, we are not able to build strong bond with all the people whom we met as our available time is limited. Hence, there is an upcoming social trend of people with wider social circles, but weaker ties (people we don't know very well but who provide us with useful information and ideas).

Impact of Social Media on Society

Social media also influences people's buying behaviours. Digital Influence Group reported that 91% of the people say consumer reviews are the #1 aid to buying decisions and 87% trust a friend's recommendation over critic's review. It is thrice more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising for purchasing decisions. 1 word-of-mouth conversation has an impact of 200 TV ads. With the prevalence use of social media, there is numerous news related to it from the most viewed YouTube video on "Armless pianist wins 'China's Got Talent'" to Web-assisted suicide cases (e.g. New Jersey college student who killed himself after video of him in a sexual encounter with another man was posted online). Thus, does social networking make us better or worse off as a society?

Positive Effects of Social Media

Besides having opportunity to know a lot of people in a fast and easy way, social media also helped teenagers who have social or physical mobility restrictions to build and maintain relationships with their friends and families. Children who go overseas to study can still stay in meaningful contact with their parents. To a greater extend, there is anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies.

In 2008, President-elected Obama won the election through the effective use of social media to reach millions of audience or voters. The Obama campaign had generated and distributed huge amount of contents and messages across email, SMS, social media platforms and their websites. Obama and his campaign team fully understood the fundamental social need that everyone shares - the need of being "who we are". Therefore, the campaign sent the message as "Because It's about YOU" and chose the right form of media to connect with individuals, call for actions and create community for a social movement. They encouraged citizens to share their voices, hold discussion parties in houses and run their own campaign meetings. It truly changed the delivery of political message.

Obama campaign had made 5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites (3 million friends on Facebook itself) and posted nearly 2,000 YouTube videos which were watched over 80 million times. At its peak, their website, MyBarackObama.com, had 8.5 million monthly visitors and produced 400,000 blog posts. In order to ensure that their contents were found by people, the Obama campaign spent .5 million on Google search in October alone, 0,000 on Advertising.com, 7,000 on Facebook in 2008, etc. Currently, Obama's Twitter account has close to 6 million followers.

In 2010, after the earthquake happened in Haiti, many of the official communication lines were down. The rest of the world was not able to grasp the full picture of the situation there. To facilitate the sharing of information and make up for the lack of information, social media came in very handy to report the news about the affected area on what happened and what help was needed. Tweets from many people provided an impressive overview of the ongoing events from the earthquake. BBC covered the event by combining tweets from the work of its reporter Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince at the ground. Guardian's live blog also used social media together with the information from other news organisations to report about the rescue mission.

It has been two years since CNN officially launched iReport as a section of its website where people can upload video material, with contact information. During the Haiti crisis, CNN had published a range of social media material but not all the materials were verified. The editorial staff would vet the reports from the citizen journalists and labeled them differently compared to unverified contents. On Facebook, a group, named "Earthquake Haiti", was formed to show support and share updates and news. It had more than 14,000 members and some users even pleaded for assistance to the injured Haitians in the group. Using email, Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook, thousands of volunteers as part of Project Ushahidi were able to map reports sent by people from Haiti.

The most impressive part of the social media's impact on Haiti is the charity text-message donations that soared to over million for the victims in Haiti. People interested in helping the victims are encouraged to text, tweet and publicize their support using various social networking sites. The Global Philanthropy Group had also started a campaign to ask wealthy people and celebrities, like Ben Stiller and John Legend to use Twitter and Facebook to encourage others to give to UNICEF. An aid worker, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, allowed the advice from other aid workers and donors to post on her blog regarding to choosing which charitable organisations to support. In the meantime, donors were asking questions in Twitter, Facebook and blogs about their donations and endorsements of their favourite charities. After every crisis, the social media for social cause becomes a more effective medium to spread the word.

Negative Effects of Social Media

There are always two sides of every coin. Social media is just a tool or mean for people to use. It is still up to the users on how to use this tool (just like a knife, can help you to cut food or hurt others). Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on "The Future of Online Socializing" from the highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey consisted of 895 technology stakeholders and critics. The negative effects presented by the respondents included time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly shallow relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.

Some respondents also highlighted that there will be development of some new psychological and medical syndromes that will be "variations of depression caused by the lack of meaningful quality relationships", and a "new world society". The term, "Social Networking", has begun to deceive the users to believe they are social creatures. For instance, spending a couple of hours using Farmville and chatting with friends concurrently does not convert into social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person might be totally different from his/her offline character, causing chaos when the two personalities meet. It is apparent in online dating when the couple gets together in face-to-face for the first time. Their written profiles do not clearly represent their real-life characters. It is more enticing for people to type something that others want to hear than saying the truth.

Besides the "friendship", creators of social networking sites and users redefine the term, "privacy" in the Internet as well. The challenge in data privacy is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. Almost any information posted on social networking sites is permanent. Whenever someone posts pictures or videos on the web, it becomes viral. When the user deletes a video from his/her social network, someone might have kept it and then posted it onto other sites like YouTube already. People post photographs and video files on social networking sites without thinking and the files can reappear at the worst possible time. In 2008, a video of a group of ACJC students hazing a female student in school on her birthday was circulated and another video of a SCDF recruit being "welcomed" (was hosed with water and tarred with shoe polish) to a local fire station made its way online.

Much news has been reported about online privacy breach in Facebook and Facebook is constantly revising their privacy policy and changing their privacy controls for the users. Interestingly, even when users delete their personal information and deactivate their Facebook account, Facebook will still keep that information and will continue to use it for data mining. A reporter asked whether the data will at least be anonymized. The Facebook representative declined to comment.

In the corporate world, human resource managers can access Facebook or MySpace to get to know about a candidate's true colours, especially when job seekers do not set their profiles to private. Research has found that almost half of employers have rejected a potential worker after finding incriminating material on their Facebook pages. Some employers have also checked the candidates' online details in Facebook pages to see if they are lying about their qualifications. Nowadays, younger generations have a complete disregard for their own privacy, opening doors to unwelcome predators or stalkers.

Impact of Social Media on Society
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What Is Social Networking?

First of all, what is social networking? Well, social networking is a service, site or platform that allows individuals who share common interests to communicate and share ideas. It allows you to interact with single individuals or organized groups.

Social media platforms allow you to build a profile that showcases your interests, goals and personality. Through this profile, you'll build a sort of online identity that will allow you to find like-minded individuals and allow them to find you. This will allow you to build close relationships with people you wouldn't normally be able to reach because of time or distance.

Social platforms allow you to share data, ideas, files and pretty much any kind of information in a matter of seconds. They allow businesses to build a close relationship with their customer and personalize their marketing approach.

What Is Social Networking?

There are all kinds of social platforms for all kinds of individuals. While sites like Facebook and MySpace are mainly focused on social interaction, some other media, such as LinkedIn, aim at helping professionals share ideas and information.

Social media is being used more and more by big companies as a legitimate advertising tool. Social networking allows you to gather personal information about your prospects almost instantly. It allows companies to target specific groups and increase their return on investment.

Social platforms such as Twitter are being used by everybody from news organizations to politicians these days. As a matter of fact, social media is now seen as a central part of any political campaign. Social Advertising is also being used by non-for-profit organizations that wish to bring more awareness to their cause.

Social networking is a brand new way of communicating and building relationships between people. Social networks are becoming more and more popular everyday and it has been estimated that people spend 110 billions of minutes on social media every month.

So if you're a business owner and you're not using the power of social networking to further your business, you're definitely missing out. Increasing your presence on social media could help you and your business in ways you couldn't imagine. So make sure that you don't overlook the power of social networking next time you're thinking about launching an advertising campaign.

What Is Social Networking?
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