Social Networking Practices

Social Networking Practices Paper

The incorporation of social networking has become crucial in the business world. Currently, the most popular social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The time spent on social networks already exceeds the time spent on email, and usage of social networking continues to grow and expand. It is a great way for a business to reach a lot of people with low cost. A business would choose its type of social networking site based on the target audience they intend to reach. Social networking sites make it easy to target these specific groups.

Addressing the nature of effective marketing, businesses can reach their target audience by choosing criteria such as geography, age, marital status, and gender for their messages to reach. For example, Facebook has advertisement banners appear on member’s Facebook pages according to key words found in their profile, that way the advertisement reaches someone who will have may have an interest in its topic. Different social networking sites have different settings, appropriate for reaching their audiences in ways that seem appropriate for that particular site; For example, LinkedIn is professional, MySpace is informal and free-form, and Facebook is a mix of the two. Social media can be a powerful communication tool with a number of options to satisfy the businesses’ wants. For example, Facebook gives the option of using fan pages, groups, events, advertising, and applications. Blogging on fan pages, groups, and even events can give businesses insight into what the potential consumer is thinking and see why they may be happy or unhappy with what is offered. Using such options makes a business a “pull” source of information, resulting from consumers seeking information rather than information being pushed on them. Twitter is also a good example of this; people “follow” a user because they are seeking information about them. Having presence in a social...