January 22, 2010 (N.E.T. Resources) Currently, social network and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are among the top twenty most visited sites on the Internet, ranking higher than Amazon.com, CNN.com, and NYTimes.com. Users are spending 67% more time on social networks now than they did one year ago, Twitter use is up 1500% since it was launched in 2006, and Facebook just announced that it is revamping its search and privacy settings now that its users total more than 350 million. With statistics like these, it’s clear that many consumers are using social networks and that they are not leaving any time soon.

The world of social marketing can be a bit overwhelming, especially for those internet users who have not yet made it to the party, but the language really is quite easy to master. A social network is a site on which people and organizations can share information about themselves, connect with each other, and explore their own list of connections and the lists made by others. Popular social networks include Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Social media is information that is meant to be spread through social interaction. Examples of social media include blogs, photos, videos, wikis, and podcasts.  Much social media is disseminated on social networks, but it can also exist on its own on sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger.

When business owners add their companies to Facebook, they do so by creating Fan pages on which they can post just about anything from hours of operation and a mission statement to promotional announcements and pictures from company-sponsored events. People who connect with business pages are called “fans,” and they can interact with the business by leaving comments and suggestions. Twitter users post short messages called “tweets” and interact with each other by “following,” or by earning new “followers.”  Years ago, when Facebook was a site for high school and college students and nary a line of Twitter’s code had been written, this lingo was considered youth-speak. Nowadays, however, adults are flocking to social networks like never before. Currently, one out of five internet users between the ages of 18 and 44 use social networks, the median age of a Twitter user is 31, and the median age of a Facebook user is 33.

The key for business owners to appealing to customers via social networking is fairly simple: post content that is interesting and useful, and post it often! Retailers could post information about sales and new products; service providers might post helpful tips or define industry-specific terms that their clients might be unfamiliar with; doctors and lawyers who are concerned about privacy laws could post links to news related to their fields. No matter what industry the business is a part of, its page must be updated regularly to keep its fans and followers engaged.

For now, there is no way to measure the exact effects social networking has on business promotion, but some of social marketing’s benefits are obvious in spite of the lack of empirical evidence. One of the best ways social networks affect businesses is by generating brand exposure on the Web. If a company is on social networks, links to one or more of its accounts will almost always appear on the first page of Google’s search results, which means that customers will have multiple sources of information on the company’s philosophy and services. Social media has a similar effect on brand exposure and internet presence. For example, blog entries that are posted on a company’s site could be linked to by others in the industry, disseminated on social news sites like Digg.com, or end up in hundreds of tweets and status updates. This kind of interaction not only establishes a business as an authority in its field, but also drives links to the company’s site, thus improving the site’s search engine rankings and online visibility.  

Of course, social networking is not just about driving visitors to a company’s site—the networks also act as more direct and personal extensions of an organization’s domain. Launching a company website is still the best way to establish an online presence, as websites are the perfect homes for permanent information about businesses—such as hours of operation and available products and services—that customers must be able to access whenever they need it. Social networks, on the other hand, are great places to post information that’s relevant to the moment — such as sales, promotions and breaking news—because they are daily internet destinations for so many customers. Social networks also allow businesses to interact directly with customers. These simple exchanges help businesses garner a core of loyal fans and followers who will appreciate their relationship with the company and can recommend it to others with a quick click of a mouse.