Facebook is the king of the social networks,
and it seems that every company or website out there that it trying to
make a name for themselves is using Facebook to grow some kind of social
presence or following online.
But what if Facebook just not your cup of tea, or what if you have maxed out your brand’s or website’s effectiveness on Facebook?
There are plenty of other social networks out there that you can
utilize to draw more folks to your brand or website. Below is a list of
four of these types of sites that you can use.
Microblogging Sites
Microblogging sites are social networks that are just what they sound
like – you tell the world what you want to say in very small pieces. Twitter
is of course the main example of such a site. You make a statement or a
comment in 160 characters or less, and the people on Twitter who
“follow” you will
be able to see it. You can also reply to other people
on Twitter and have a conversation with them.
Twitter
is great for businesses, as it is expected that companies and websites,
while they should offer helpful information, will be largely
self-promotional with their information given out on the social network.
So, your site or business can use about as many shameless plug as you
want on Twitter, as long as you do not get too overbearing!
There are other microblogging sites besides Twitter, but it is really
the 800 pound gorilla of the microblogging world. If you have not used
it before, it is very simple to get signed up and started right away.
You can start sharing links to your new blog posts or other helpful
information and following people who might be interested in your niche
right away.
Blogs
Blog sites, such as wordpress.com, tumblr.com, and others, make great
social networks for companies and websites to join. These sites are
simply blogs hosted at different websites that you can use to update
information about your website, about your company, etc. You can even
get creative with it and highlight different staff members, customers,
etc.!
With one of these blogs, make sure you have it linked to your main
site so that people can find it. Also, ask questions of readers and
customers and encourage conversation. The more comments you get, the
better!
Another tip for blogs – make sure you update them regularly with good
content and have a way for people to sign up for notifications about
updates. This way, your followers can come back knowing there will be
new quality content on your site regularly. Make sure that your content
is helpful and something that people can really use
Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites are a great way for internet users to share
their favorite content on the web. A few popular social bookmarking
sites include Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Del.icio.us. It works
essentially just like a regular bookmark in your browser, except it is
public, and other people can “vote” on your submission. The great links
that get shared and voted on by the most people go on to end up on the
first page of the social bookmarking site, and can actually end up
getting a lot of traffic!
These social networks really require that you submit some exceptional
content to get noticed and voted up by the users of the sites, but they
can be very powerful. Not only can you submit and vote on different
websites, you can even “friend” people like you can on Facebook. If you
add to your list of followers on these sites, you may see some traffic
from the people who follow you, as they will be notified when you upload
new content.
Another great benefit of these sites is search engine optimization.
When you submit a link from your site on one these social networks, you
are actually helping your SEO by building a high quality link back to
your site! So you get the social networking and the SEO benefit all in
one shot.
Video Sites
Finally, our last (but not least) set of social networks is video sites.
Video continues to grow in popularity and in numbers online. People are
even watching video on their mobile devices and tablets these days as
the internet and processing speeds on them get faster and faster. Video
now seems to be incorporated into almost every site that you visit, and
it is said that YouTube is now is #2 search engine after Google. In
other words, people are using YouTube to find answers to questions just
like they would any other search engine.
With YouTube and other video sites, you can add “subscribers” to your video channel,
which are similar to friends on Facebook. This is a great feature for
businesses, especially ones that plan to upload videos regularly.
Subscribers to your channel will receive a notification when you upload a
new video, so you can get regular eyes on your offers or websites just
by uploading good videos regularly. Outside of YouTube , you can try out
Vimeo, Dailymotion, and a host of other video sharing sites out there
to get more exposure for your video content.
While you will need some expertise if you want to create your own
videos, it has never been easier to create and upload videos to these
social networks. If you do not want to create them yourself, you can
easily find someone online who will create them for you for a small fee.
While Facebook may
be the largest player, by far, in the sphere of social networks, as you
can see, there are plenty of other options when it comes to growing
your follower base online. If you focus even on one of the four above,
you are very likely to see some increases in traffic to your website,
which will hopefully turn into an increase in sales for your website or
business!
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