Social Education » Myspace

Determining Social Media’s Value Can be a Difficult Proposition

Admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:11:28 +0000

Ever since the first blog went live, PR pros have been trying to figure out how to capitalize on the medium on behalf of clients. And while social media is in many ways no longer an experiment, determining its actual value largely still is.
There are lots of great social networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others. Some have a decidedly more business-oriented focus like LinkedIn, but basically they all purport to bring like minded people together in the name of establishing valuable relationships.
Although it took some time from the emergence of MySpace and other networks for businesses to pay close attention to the trend, soon companies started trying to figure out is what value should be placed on the trend as a whole and which networks should receive priority in their marketing efforts. Once that happened, PR agencies started opening new media practices and there were also a host of social media evangelists that hit the Web espousing their value. And while some of them have certainly proven popular, the jury’s still out as to whether social media is a trend that’s worth a significant investment of a business’ time and/or money.
Earlier this week, in a report titled Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media, the Society for New Communications Research examined how consumers are using social networks and which ones they value. While 74 percent of respondents say they choose companies and brands based on the experiences shared online by customers, most still indicated they used conventional search engines for their research rather than social media networks. In fact, several leading social networks scored poorly when it comes to consumer influence, with only 39 percent saying they used micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce; 27 percent used YouTube and 22 percent turned to Facebook and MySpace.
Not surprisingly, technology and e-commerce companies tended to dominate the online discussion landscape, with Dell Computer Corp. and Amazon. com Inc. taking top honors as the companies most often discussed by consumers online. That said, those who do turn to social media networks are a desirable demographic, with an average net income of more than $100,000; most are college educated and range from 25-55 years old.

As with all things new, especially those involving technology, there’s been a rush to adopt social media networks. One of the problems, however, is the fact that the social media sector is still quite decentralized, with several companies trying to jockey for the lead spots in the marketplace. This makes it especially hard for companies to know which investments will generate reliable returns. Historically, in the early phases of a new trend’s emergence, this factor hasn’t mattered very much; however, the fact that little attention has been paid to a return on investment has meant that technology-related trends have experienced harsher than normal boom and bust cycles.

I was in a discussion earlier today with a group of legal marketing executives and a consultant who helps law firms set up their own blogs. The discussion originally started when an executive asked others whether they used Twitter, and if so, how? That spawned a lengthy conversation as to whether social media is judged in the same vein as other marketing activities and, if so, how a return-on-investment can be reasonably calculated. Even though the cost to set up a social media presence may be minimal, there should still be goals set and those should ideally be linked to a positive impact on a company’s bottom line; after all, no matter what business you’re in, time really does equal money.
The blogging consultant was of the mind that people responsible for bringing in business do the best when they’re engaging in activities they truly enjoy under the theory that the use of these mediums mean a firm has the opportunity to reach potential customers that their competitors, who aren’t embracing the platforms, are missing. That’s certainly theoretically possible, although I suspect it will be some time before we really know for sure.
In the meantime, I still encourage companies – especially small and mid-size firms with limited PR and/or marketing budgets – to continue mining opportunities within conventional media channels. Those channels may not be as “sexy” as social media, but they still deliver an audience of many potential customers with desirable demographics.

Learn Real Skills From Social Networking

Admin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:11:58 +0000

In the modern era most us of access the Internet, using it to enhance our knowledge and broaden our horizons about the world and many of its objects. A recent popular usage of the Internet in the past two three years is to connect with other people. The birth of the social networking sites have gained mass popularity and are used by a many, many of us to connect with our families and friends, and to find or meet new people virtually.
Social networking has surpassed the need for meeting physically for communicating things or for keeping in touch. Since it is free, it enjoys mass popularity and is gaining thousands of new users daily across the world! All of this popularity has revolutionized the way we communicate and has truly made the world a global village where no person close to you is not far enough to not to be reached online.
Recent studies have shown that social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Myspace have helped children learn some very important skills, which will help them throughout life. Researchers found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested.
This shows that the internet is helping in breaking the socio-economic barriers which prevent two people from two different socio-economic backgrounds from intermixing. On these networking websites, no one is rich or poor and everyone is equal.
Studies have also revealed that nearly all of today’s children access the internet, and a large majority of them have accounts on social networking websites. This has a huge impact on the skills that the children learn, as it helps in removing shyness slowly, the children become technologically empowered, and they get to showcase their creativity on a global platform without much effort. Young users of such social networking sites also learn to communicate and learn to become open to diverse views, thereby enhancing their life skills.
These skills are essential not only for survival in the 21st century but are extremely vital in jobs within an organization, which is where all these skills count. Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They’re also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology.
The social networking Web sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Squidoo, and MyBlogLog offer tremendous educational potential. Thus sites such as those mentioned above have a great reserve of educational benefits especially as our friend on these sites.

How to Create Niche Business Social Networking Sites

Admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:21:37 +0000

Social networking is the buzz word in today’s Internet space. With lots and lots of people getting into Social networking everyday, many wise online marketers are creating their own Social networking websites. However, with many online marketers getting into Social networking, it is necessary to highlight your social networking website to avoid getting lost in the crowd. For this you have to offer your users with something unique and useful.

Provide the users with interactive Social networking Softwares

Do you know the reason behind the huge popularity of the social networking websites like myspace and face book? One of the reason is that they provide some interactive, useful social networking softwares. Unlike other softwares that needs to be downloaded to the users computer (which most of them do not prefer), these social networking softwares doesn’t need to be downloaded. These web based social networking softwares are gaining popularity these days because of the ease of use. As there are no compatibility problems associated with these social networking softwares, anyone can use it.

Creating Social networking software for your own Business Social Networking Website

When it comes to creating a social networking software, you will come up with a question “Should I Build my Own Social Networks Software?” Just keep reading on to find the answer. You can create the social networking software for your website by yourself if:

1. You are a skilled programmer.
2. Have lots of time to spare to spend on researching the trends in the Social media.
3. Are able to identify the user needs and satisfy them

The users of any websites will become unpleasant if the site takes long time to load. Moreover, the error messages are the ones that make the users of your social networking website more irate. Once the error message shows up to any user of your social networking website, they will never return back to your website. If you are a no vice programmer, trying to add or build social networking softwares, then your social networking softwares will be more error prone. All of these factors will be rather overwhelming to you if you are not a skilled programmer. Yet creating your own social networking software for your social networking website is not impossible.

Getting professional help for building Social Networking softwares

There is nothing to worry even if you don’t have the above said requirements for building social networking software. The professional social networking web designers are capable of building unique social networking softwares too. There are so many ready made social networking softwares also. All you have to do is to pick the right one that best fulfils your customer requirements. Getting social networking softwares built through programmers has many advantages. It saves much of your time and money along with enabling you to offer the users of your social networking website with some great interactive social networking software.