Social Networking 101

What is social networking?

Social Networking is an effective and easy way to market your website to the millions of potential customers that are online every day. In most cases marketing through social networks is free.

What are social networks?

There are two major types of social networks.

• A single website that allows users to create their own space (blog, profile, etc) and connects that space to all the other users is a social network. This is the more commonly understood type of social network. The most popular social networks like this include MySpace.com (see our profile) and Facebook.com.
• A group of websites that share a functionality (usually provided by one website) that allows them to share their web experience is also a social network. Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon.com are good examples of this type of social network. To learn more about how these sites work click here.

How do I take advantage of social networking?

All you have to do is add a few links to your website. Your users will use the social links to share your website with their friends, colleges, and peers.

Why setup a social network?

Social Networks are like search engines with a twist. They are great for driving traffic to your website, they are free, and they don’t need to involve a lot of work. Each social network puts a twist on how they deliver traffic to your website. Some let users search by related interest, some let users vote for websites, and others simply make it easy for users to share their favorite websites with their peers. In the end social networks allow users to find websites they did not know to look for, but are very happy to have found.

Creating profiles with social networks and adding your website to their online tools will increase the number of people who are interested in your area of expertise and accidentally stumble onto your website.  For example, let’s pretend you setup an account with the popular social network MySpace, and you add a link from your website to your MySpace profile.  Now your users (people interested in your area of expertise) that have a MySpace profile might add you as a friend on MySpace.  By adding you to their profile all of their friends can now see your businesses profile.  These are people that may not have otherwise known about your business, but are likely interested in your area of expertise.  The old saying, “birds of a feather flock together” comes to mind.  Social networking costs nothing and has the potential to drive a substantial amount of traffic to your website.

What social networks does Pro Site Tonight use?

You probably noticed the large icons at the top of the website. They are for (left to right) Delicious, Stumble Upon, Twitter, and MySpace. The Twitter and MySpace icons link to our profiles with those social networks. The Delicious and Stumble Upon icons will bookmark the page in your Delicious or Stumble Upon account. Try them out. We also have an icon for our RSS feed (orange – far right) which is not a social networking site.

To see descriptions of the social networks that Pro Site Tonight contributes to click here.