Social Networking Stuff

Social Networking Cars of the Future
By Amanda Rodriguez

We’ve seen the niftiest gadgets, features, and applications on cars in recent years. From automatic start engines, navigation and entertainment systems but now a new incorporation emerges. Today social networking has taken on another level in our lives, but it has yet to reach our cars. If you don’t account for being able to access social media through our phone, anywhere, anytime, why not be able to socially network with others while we are on the road? It may sound like a ridiculous and borderline unsafe idea, but for some car manufacturers, it’s not such a far out idea.

While it’s highly debatable whether incorporating social media into our cars is a good idea, in the very near future, it may very well be a popular addition. Speculated to launch and release in 2012, social networks are apparently going to be integrated in our cars in a number of ways. Firstly as an additional application on a tablet or portable computational system that is embedded as an additional feature in our car. A system that uses twitter and Facebook to let you know when something’s happening or to notify of certain settings that you can control or edit. In addition, the service may notify you of batter power warnings to nearby electric car owners, remind you of some maintenance tips, and even allow you to communicate with nearby cars and owners or passengers of nearby vehicles.

Social networking is seriously going to take over our lives if we’re not careful. By 2015 it has been speculated that automakers will woo its consumers and social media crazed fans with additional communications features. Touch screen command systems are already available and will incorporate almost instant access to social networking sites. Thumb wheel controls will not only allow you to increase and decrease volume, or command your windshield wipers to start wiping - but also let you control audio, navigation, and climate control functions. It seems that a robust amount of technology and communication will be made available in our cars.

On another Facebook platform, being able to befriend nearby cars and users is a novel and almost outrageous idea. This will allow drivers to “talk” to other cars and their drivers, and even befriend them on a social networking site like twitter or Facebook, and receive updates in your feed from these users. How this new feature will transform our lives, and ways of interaction, our driving habits, and the way we communicate to one another is uncertain.

What is certain that while these new features can be useful, many question the safety it brings. Drivers should be paying attention to the road and looking out for any hazards on the road. Will these additions affect our attention to the things that really matter? How will this affect auto insurance policies? One thing is certain, new social media features can only increase auto insurance rates, whether by a lot or a miniscule number. Taking the responsible steps and making sure your vehicle is insured is crucial, with this added distraction.

Free-lance writer with a passion for Writing and Research.
Amanda Rodriguez
Auto Insurance Guide

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Top 5 Social Networking Sites 2011
By Lakmal D Wijerathna

Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although this is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online.

This kind of site users are rapidly increasing with expanding of internet users day by day. Actually today internet users (including you and me) are expending their time with this kind of networks rather than other websites (>50%), especially teenagers. There are lots of reasons to use this sites such as make a friendship, chatting, dating, knowledge sharing, etc. When consider ranking sites’ data and unique visitors, followings are the top 5 social networking sites 2011.

1. Facebook

I’m sure without any drought Facebook is the numver one. This website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Mark Zuckerberg. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. Today this is the most popular social networking site. Because of this popularity today there are hundreds of Facebook addicting people.

Google Page Rank - 10, Alexa Rank - 2, Unique Visitors - 597,379,055

2. MySpace

MySpace (stylized as My_____ and previously MySpace) is a service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. MySpace was the most popular site before popular the Facebook. Users can send emails, post videos, listen to music, and write blogs; the site also includes classified ads and posting of events.

Google Page Rank - 9, Alexa Rank - 102, Unique Visitors - 139,270,343

3. Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as “tweets”, and images. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. Twitter rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with millions of users as of 2011. Users may subscribe to other author tweets-this is known as “following” and subscribers are known as “followers”. When release tweets second by second, actually its like nonstop birds’ tweets.

Google Page Rank - 9, Alexa Rank - 9, Unique Visitors - 94,933,108

4. Linkedin

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003. This site is tailored more for professionals but with its friendly environment, unique monthly visitors, and overall appearance it made popular. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Google Page Rank - 9, Alexa Rank - 13, Unique Visitors - 40,684,735

5. Hi5

Hi5 is a website based in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. By 2008, comScore reported that hi5 had become the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors. Hi5 has many features common to social networking sites, such as friend networks, photo sharing, user groups, and status updates.

Google Page Rank - 7, Alexa Rank - 547, Unique Visitors - 27,413,800

A Prediction - Now there is a good competitor in this niche. World number one search engine owned Google inc. has released a social networking site call Google+. It’s just like a new-born baby. Therefore still I can’t express 100% correct prediction. But I can say Google+ will be a headache to Mark Zuckerberg.

More Top 5 Lists

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Importance of Social Networks for Businesses
By Alireza Ziaei Moayyed

Introduction:

Companies after ever increasing the speed of utilization of internet and social networks by individuals decided to use social networks to become more and more popular in terms of their banding strategies, positioning, marketing activities, customers services and feedbacks, implementation of e-CRM and alike. People use social networks in order to communicate, share their ideas, and use the flow of information and other means of publishing information about themselves.

Although since 1990s, utilization of internet, many social networks and internet tools had emerged, it was not popular. Recently, through the development of social network in friendly atmosphere and with less complexity in terms of functioning for individuals, this service (social network service) has become part of people’s lives.

In terms of clarification of analysis on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and customer relationship management and customer feedbacks, social networks play a pivotal role. As a result companies have tried to utilize Social network services in order to better serve customers and obtain other various objectives. Most companies recognized that social network sites (SNSs) like Napster, Facebook, and Twitter and so on are the best places to them in order to highlight their brand image through which they can increase their market share, and sustainability.

What is a Social Network?

It is considered as a platform through which social relations will be built among people and information sharing will be facilitated. Through social networks sites personal information and relationships can be shared and users can stay in touch.

Most of SNSs provide a personal page for posting, ability to search for friends and other issues like updating profile and personal data and have the ability to restrict and/or conceal the mentioned information by page owner from the eyes of public or specific people.

These Online facilities (SNSs) have improved the movements of individuals on online tasks, especially in the mentioned social networks for the purpose of maintaining friendships regardless of distance (geographical limitation). Not only that but also it enables people to find better jobs and partners.

Regarding the acceptance of these sites by people, companies have become interested to get involved in this process through which they can sell their products and services and better serve customer ’s needs and wants and through analysis of consumer buying patterns and their feedbacks they can fine tune their decision making process as well as their strategies.

Below information reveals the fact that how rapidly number of social networks increase since 1997.

1997: SixDegrees.com

1998: —

1999: Asian Avenue, Live Journal, Black Planet

2000: LunarStorm (SNS relaunch), Migente

2001: Cyworld, Ryze

2002: Fotolog, Friendster, SkyBlog

2003: CouchSurfing, LinkedIn, MySpace, HI5, Tribe.net,

2004: Orkut, Dogster, Flicker, Facebook (Harward only), Mixi, Piczo, Hyves, Catster

2005: YouTube, Zanga, Yahoo.360, Facebook (Highschool networks), Bebo, Ning, Asian Avenue & BlackPlanet (relaunched)

2006 till now: QQ, Windows Live Space, Facebook (Corporate Networks), Twitter, MyChurch, and then Facebook (Everyone)

Many companies during previous decade as a result of increasing the use of these networks have decided to penetrate into SNSs in order to find the relevant information of people, elicit information and analyze them in order to make appropriate decision based on market moves; not only in terms of customers but also in terms of competitors and rules and regulations. They aim at finding useful information in order to do external (Scanning, monitoring, forecasting, assessing), and industry analysis (5 forces of porter) as well as competitor analysis.

Usefulness of Social Networks:

• Considering SNSs as a marketing tool, they help companies to interact with customers and create online communities and pages,
• Updating latest activity of companies, advertisements and providing customers with applications necessary or useful in order to increase the traffic of their page, blog or community,
• Facilitate the process of being aware of the company, and promote ideas, products and services,
• Skipping search engine optimizations rankings,
• It helps to get feedback from customers and to better implement the concept o electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) and to classify valuable customers in order to serve them with value creating activities,
• Focus on market, global reach, limitless number of customers who can be served, to better segment the market and customers,
• Enables different model of advertising such word of mouth, suggestions for specific group or niche and so on.
• Fastest way to get information and finding opportunities,

Social Networking Sites and E-commerce Businesses:

Although other methods of communication exist, they are to some extent different comparing to SNSs. Social network is a place in which individuals become fan of a page, they see each other and based on their mutual interest they become capable of interacting with each other and make a community on their own.

The mentioned issue is the result of shifting the power through utilization of SNSs from company to consumers. More social networks get popular, the tougher is the implementation of business based on traditional procedures therefore; companies must consider market moves in this case. Besides, by digging up the information available on these networks identification of valuable customers would be easier and a business can serve its valuable customers much better in this regard.

Regarding the accessibility of individuals to internet, companies moved from Brick and Mortar to Click and Mortar or to virtual one which resulted in operational efficiency improvement as well as generating revenue.

As companies are moving toward the above mentioned issue (adaptation of EC), they utilize several strategies to achieve success. They used various strategies in business and corporate level to reduce costs of transaction, reducing delivery time, to better serve the customers and to better manage them, and to better inform them about the current activities performing by the business especially for service companies. Accordingly, due to massive passion of individuals in case of using social networks like Facebook, twitter and so on, companies decided to reduce the gap between themselves and consumers by following consumers passion therefore, they started to make use of social networks and possibly other web 2.0 applications on extend their businesses.

In this era, almost all companies have websites and among them, some have social network to better communicate with customers which is linked to a website by the use of social plugins. Consequently, it is highly suggested to businesses that if they are not being first mover in Social networks, at least do never miss the chance of being late mover.

Impact of Social Networks on Marketing:

As it is mentioned above, individuals will be attracted to join famous social networks in order to create a profile and connect with existing members or pages or businesses. Once a profile created, users can interact with each other; send invitation for others to join. By the time a link shaped, communication to a friend, group members become easy because users tend to organize themselves by affinity, life stage, and psychographics which would be an excellent chance for targeted marketing.

Impact of Social Networks on Purchase Intention:

Through the use of social network as mentioned before members share their ideas, they may talk about different thing even including the recent product they bought or a particular type of service given to them or offered by a company. Many people around the world believe in talking to other consumers in order to get the required information before purchasing for a good or service (a matter of trust factor-word of mouth). And nowadays consumers due to availability of information on the internet they prefer to search online and when going online they more like to go to social networks in order to find more information from other customers, and what have been shared on social network pages of a particular company about certain type of good or service.

Form the eyes of marketers the information shared is vital for companies regarding the fact that information shared are the real facts mentioning by customers/consumers, and friends or fans of a particular group may rely or trust on other people (or fans) when saying facts.

In terms of marketing, in social networks various marketing aspects can be covered.

• Word of mouth,
• Market research,
• Market segmentation,
• General marketing,
• Communication between customers as well as employees,
• Public relations,
• Customer service
• Management of reputation and brand positioning,

Marketers use network marketing because of its various benefits which some of them are:

• Product increase and brand awareness,

Being online helps companies to increase the awareness of their products and services especially through social networks sites.

By every interaction, marketers try to indirectly lead members or fans to follow the news of companies and everything and remember the brand and website.

• Increase the traffic,

All companies try to increase the traffic of their websites by using various methods like communicating, recommending and postings on SNSs followed by a link in order to guide a fan or member to the official website and let them know their available products and services.

• Improve search engine optimization (SEO),

In order to increase the popularity of a website companies need to share more links everywhere so that search engines find the contents follows by link easily. In this case people will read more of the content a company shared. Social media must be part of search engine optimization strategy.

It is worth mentioning that the value of finding content on SNSs is very much because they appear natural to search engines.

• Increase loyalty of customers,

Brand loyalty will be achieved when a company can promote its services or products via social networks. By releasing true valuable content, trust go up and reputation of company increases.

In the process of using social media customers feel that they are participants rather than being only a user. If they feel they are participant they will be more involved and as a result of customer involvement and value creating activities of company customer loyalty increases.

• Increase the success rate of lunching new good,

Regarding the fact that flow of information is very high in SNSs, understanding customer needs and want become easier which can be considered as a unique opportunity of social networks. Accordingly, companies can serve customers better by lunching goods appropriate to the tastes of consumers and manage product development process in order to increase customer loyalty and retention.

Impact of Social Networks on Sales:

SNSs are helpful in case of acquiring more benefit and possibly increase market share in competitive market. Through the utilization of social networks companies will find new method to serve customers better based on their expectations and their needs, to find customers, communicate with them and understand them in order to acquire new customers and also to retain the existing one.

Although it is a good opportunity, in some organization still a vague attitude toward utilization of social networks exists. Through social networks a salesperson can achieve benefit of having access to profiles before the commencement of communication.

SNSs and e-commerce businesses have made the world very small because they have eliminated the geographical limitations as a barrier for marketing and sales and by going online, they reduced the number of intermediaries therefore; firms may sell more and achieve more profit.

To exemplify, Facebook has millions users and many of them are over 18years old and its traffic is high. Therefore Facebook can be a very good place to do promotional, customer centric activities in order to increase sales. Also lots of pages exists that users are involved in. Sales persons and marketers can analyze the insights of the pages. Every page reveals information about daily, weekly and monthly active users, demographic information, daily feedbacks and so on which can be used to analyze the customer behavior pattern and customer relationship management which ultimately results in increase in sales.

Consequently, through penetrating into social networks, businesses have an access to vast majority of consumers. So creating account in social networks and joining groups leads to expand contacts and increase sales.

Impact of Social Networks on Services:

Individuals using social networks are increasing day by day. So the rate of communication among them increases. These communications can be about social stuff or about a product or service they purchased. These communications among individuals can be considered as an opportunity and also a challenge for customer service departments. Customers mainly like to receive a service based on their preferred channels. Because customers reveal their opinion widely if they are not pleased which result in detrimental impact on a firm’s product or service.

Through social networks companies receive feedbacks from customers which lead them to improve the quality of services/products as well as finding the best opportunity based on customer’s needs and wants. Therefore customer service channels like Facebook, twitter and alike can be used as a tool for performing value creating activities.

It is worth mentioning that through SNSs many problems between customers and company can be solved on the spot and it would be easier to reduce cost of services.

In this case some social networking accelerator tools exist like (Microsoft Dynamics CRM) to better manage, handle and monitor customers. These tools perform activities like:

• Monitoring SNSs for branding issues and keywords,
• Tracking customers,

SNSs also provide efficient multi-channel service which leads to reduce customer service calls and direct contacts and costs related issues.

Some social network accelerators help to better analyze customer’s feedback and to track the feedbacks easily. Not only that but also to monitor their activities and participating in communities to identify customers service pattern and trend.

Conclusion:

Regarding all the above mentioned issues and facts, social networks can be an excellent driver for a business in so many terms whether the company is click and mortar or virtual. By having access to social networks communication with customers will be easier, companies can focus on marketing aspects as well as sales improvement by utilization of customer relationship management and public relation management. Due to intense rivalry in existing global market, it can be considered as a core competency in order to achieve competitive advantage against rivals which leads to increase in sustainability, profitability and maintaining market share.

Alireza ZIAEI MOAYYED is an MBA student with specialization in Global Marketing. If you are interested in his article writings, to find more of his knowledge sharing activities please visit his web page at http://globalmarketinginsight.wordpress.com

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Why Social Networking?
By Laxman Samtani

Social networking is a form of activity wherein individuals can socially bond to share information — whether it is personal, or business, and even crafts like music, arts, and entertainment. Social networking also allows hobbies like watching movies, reading books, and playing video games as a source of enjoyment, and even a venue for writers, actors, and even businessmen and entrepreneurs to gather together and contribute techniques and secrets to one another.

This strategy offers individuals to interact through personal dealings among a group of people or an organization, a party, or an occasion. However, the most common practice nowadays is the platform of online services, known as websites or through the internet. Sites such as Facebook, Tweeter, Tumbler, Multiply and Skype are few of the websites that provide personal, professional and social networking for entrepreneurs.

How to be part of it?

To be a member, a website will require interested individuals to provide some information in their profile, personal information such as their birthdays, business or occupation, education, and personal hobbies and interests.

The Benefits of a User

Posting quotations and status is also a way of letting people know the most recent activity of a social network user. Another service of a social networking site is the option to chat online with other users. This is known as instant messaging where multiple users can discuss or talk simultaneously in a forum. Groups in these types of structures are individuals who share a common belief. They can be a social or civic group, a family or even a clan, classmates, companies with the same business interest, or any organization promoting a cause. These websites hold discussion boards for the groups. The primary focus of the networking website is to create interaction among groups in the form of discussions. This medium also allows users to post pictures, video clips, and other tidbits as added information for the groups’ perusal. Blogging is an additional aspect of a site to provide a user the means to feature their own opinions, experiences, interests, or just simply informing the other users of what is new and current.

Personal versus Web based Social networking:

There is a vast difference between personal networking and web-based social networking. Personal sites, like meetings, parties, civic works or family gatherings have the unknown feature of social networking. They may be restricted based on their personal social networking connections which limits the full potential of a person in trying to reconnect and locate the whereabouts of old school buddies, long lost relatives, associates, and even friends. Web-based sites, on the other hand, can be easily utilized to contact and connect with the same group of people. Just by using speed and ease of the internet, and by being a member or a user of these sites is one sure way to achieve this. These sites can effectively aid anyone in their search for friends, associates, family members, and other personal matters.

Sharing information, promoting businesses, events, activities, products, crafts, and any other interests and representation one may have, are also the reason in using these web-based sites. Best of all, anyone who needs to connect with someone promptly, the user need only to log- in to their social networking account, send that person a private note or post the message so that other members and users can assist or notify the person concerned. This is in variation to the common personal social networking practice like using the phone, or asking people, wherein this method would surely consume more time and effort.

The Ethics:

The most important thing in using social networking sites is to be responsible, always respecting the rights and opinions of the other social networking users, and avoid foul languages and photographs. Be at all times ethical and follow the rules of these social networking sites.

Laxman Samtani is an Internet entrepreneur based in Toronto, Canada. You may visit his website http://www.aff-resource.com/

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Social Networking For the Hotel, Tourism, and Gaming Industries
By Eddie Powell

Social networking is on the forefront of every business person’s mind these days. How do I use it? How do I capitalize on it? How do I justify it versus considering it creative loafing for my staffers? You have heard all the buzz about MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You may have even heard about Squidoo and the seemingly thousands of other sites that are focused on connecting people to people, people to causes, people to industries, even people to businesses but you may have said, “Yea, well, I have a website. I don’t need all the rest of that stuff!”

OK… I hate to break it to you but here is a reality check. Music no longer comes on records and very few people read newspapers anymore. The same is becoming true of static websites with just a few pages of stuff that you consider interesting about your product and a couple of pictures that haven’t been changed in a year or more. Your website should enable the consumer to interact with you product, learn about food choices, sites you recommend to visit in the area, and why your beds are better for your comfort and posture than your competitor’s. Communicating through video, audio, podcasts, pdf files, ebooks, reports, and social network links is critical to staying viable in today’s world. Think about it this way, what sells you more a still picture of a new car or a test drive in that same vehicle from the dealer? Because people are so busy, experiencing communication overload, and now depending more and more on recommendations from their friends rather than research everything themselves, the rise and domination of mind space goes to social networking activities.

Hold it, let’s stop here for a moment to reinforce what you have known about people is still true. People are still people. They are still quirky. They still have their opinions, even the unfounded ones, that they will defend until death or tomorrow, which ever comes first. You know, if you have been in the hotel or tourism business for any length of time that people are critical, many times impressed by silly little things, and sometimes choose unpredictable outcomes, just because they can. You also thought you knew that people were emotional, buy on emotion, and even though some of them try to appear very analytical, they are really superficial analytical and still connect deeply on an emotional level, even if they will not admit it. You also realize that for your communication message to get across to your targeted consumer you must continue to bombard that consumer with your message over and over until it finally cuts through the clutter and overload in that consumer’s mind. Yes, advertising and marketing is a repetitive, educational game that usually requires a tremendous expenditure to produce even dismal responses. You do all you can but success seems to elude you.

Wait! Could the winning number finally be here? Is this social networking really better than winning the lottery? Is it some kind of hypnotic social mass communication that really connects with people on an individual basis? What about all those people that respond to your brand, your choice, your individual product with loud-mouth whining and complaining online that serves to diminish your brand and drives other potential consumers away from your business or industry? How do we even enter this fray let alone compete and become successful? Should we just not try?

Don’t play and have a zero chance of playing in the big leagues! Begin to play and do something, even if it is wrong, and at least you will be suited up and ready to play in the big leagues after you swing and earn a few strike outs or settle for a base hit rather than a home run. Here is an important thing to remember, even the best of players strike out some times but they tried, suited up, and took a swing at it with the potential of amazing results. Well, keep reading and I will share with you some secrets to producing your early successes and to keep those successes coming long into the future. Ready to learn and earn? Here we go!

First, people are people are people. No matter how unique they say they are, each has several similar emotional buttons that you can push to many times elicit the response you desire. Emotions are the first button. Emotions of warm and inviting bring forth the connection to home as a child, grandma’s home, and loving family memories. Help them recall those happier, less stressful times, and they will connect with you quicker. Earn that connection and they are beginning to trust you. Trust and a call to action can produce sales and income in your bank account.

A fair portion of people respond to ego. Massage their ego with compliments of how smart they are to investigate and make this purchase or to save money for their family’s needs with the inclusion of your product in their lifestyle. Soon you will see their psyche respond by trading some other item of perceived lesser value, their money, for your item(s) of greater value, a night on the town or a leisurely trip to your noted rendezvous destination. The ego compliment can also be addressed to them for another person with a message like she will really love you for respecting her and taking such good care of her for a full, relaxing weekend in the city without the kids. Now they both win and so will you as they favor you with their money. A number of other secret triggers exist within your targeted audience. All of them can produce a significant outpouring of money when enacted correctly with your marketing strategy.

For instance, the lack and loss strategy. Hurry, now before this is completely sold out, it will be gone forever, and you know that if you don’t act now then your future could be without a Valentine on this special day of the year. Those that bet on the stock market and tried to tell you how smart they were are reeling now from the losses, act now or you will join them if you don’t make your move now to invest in 24 karat gold bullion. Your dollar is losing value, global exchanges are considering downgrading the dollar, move to gold now and not only save what value you have now but improve your position as gold heads towards an all-time high.

Now that you have had a short review on triggers and secrets to moving your targeted audience into the buying position for you, your brand, and the specific benefits of your industry, it is time to revisit the social media portion of your marketing plans but first, a short stroll down memory lane. You see, when newspapers entered the market and became the medium of choice, they eclipsed the town criers. When radio entered the market and gained wide acceptance, they eclipsed the newspaper as the standard. The same thing happened with television eclipsing radio. Each time it was a new level of communication, a new method but communication between people never stopped. Oddly enough, newspaper, radio, and television were considered mass media because they forwarded the communication message out to the public but did not establish a return communication loop to verify the receipt of the message and the interaction for questions and other needs to insure desired actions by the consumer. Without this portion of the communication loop, the verification of the message received, marketers could never be truly sure of the receipt of the message and if the targeted audience actually understood what was trying to be communicated to them.

Along came call-out research, Arbitron ratings for radio, Nielsen rating for television, and other communication message verification like focus groups, in-store survey’s, and long-form printed questionnaires being mailed out. All of these only took a scientifically significant sample and extrapolated those numbers to imply the entire survey size group. Still, marketers had to trust statisticians and these bean-counters had to convince clients that all these numbers were really real. This furthered the favored notion that “figures lie and liars figure” as committed to great sayings of history.

Now, enter the computer. This super brain was supposed to help calculate large math problems, drive rocket ships to the moon, and forward standardized accounting practices in businesses around the world. With the gained popularity in business, soon it was realized that computers could do much more including assist with communication issues. Sending messages from one side of the building to the other soon became the select choice of sending one electronic message from one side of the globe to the other. Department talking to department, business talking to business, all the while people talking to people with important business and people talking to people with small talk, chit chat, and friendly interpersonal relationships that grew from one-on-one to group speak environments.

Group speak environments began to realize that they could focus on topics, around certain individuals, or center on a cause. These fan clubs, neighborhoods, and individuals connecting for a variety of reasons soon migrated to newly designed social networking architecture forums and communities. Welcome to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, along with Yahoo Groups, CompuServe communities, and others. Futurist John Nesbit pointed out in his 1990’s best seller MegaTrends that the more high tech we as humans become the more high touch our internal demands become. Thus, more high tech equates with more high touch.

For a number of years we have experienced and embraced the high tech revolution that gives voice to the individual. Email, chat rooms, groups, all focus on the individual voice being heard - sometimes not very loud, sometimes not very well, but individual nonetheless. Now, fast forward as we couple in more technology advances with critical mass of individuals wanting to voice their thoughts and you have the advent of social networking.

Social networking is today’s electronic evolution of the 1950’s staple of talking to your neighbor over the backyard fence. The individual was still valued, the news or information of the day was shared, and quality value opinions were formed. While it was typically a one-on-one exchange, buying habits could be influenced, brand priorities could be adjusted based on another persons experience, and brand fortunes changed one little communication at a time. Social networking today works much the same as a medium that can influence, change brand priorities based on another persons experience with that brand, and via communication efforts brand fortunes can be changed. The difference is many more people connecting at once via a friends list or opt-in system and brand fortunes can be made or destroyed in a few mere electronic seconds. Brands, including personal brands, raised up or shot down faster than you can read this writing.

Some people have thought that not having a presence online in any form or at least not in the social networking portion of all things electronic will eliminate them from harm. Frankly, think about the last time you were wronged. Just because that person or brand was not around, did it stop you from relating your bad experience to someone else? The same is true of your online and social networking presence, no presence does not equate with no talking about you. In football and many other arenas, the best defense is considered to be a great offense. Social media is the same. Having a presence, interacting with your audience one member at a time, and witnessing a no fear attitude are usually the better offenses. It also gives you a front row seat to any complaints and rebuttals or actions your brand cares to take and, even more importantly, talk about to the others monitoring the situation.

Imagine the hotel that has a guest complain that all the floating equipment for the pool is already taken and in use by other guests. Picture the fast acting manager sending a staffer to the local Walmart to purchase some additional items and returning within minutes to the mother who is trying to satisfy her children at the pool. This mother will tell all her online friends and family of the amazing efforts put forth by the establishment, the manager, and the brand. You will not only have a client for life but an array of multiple benefits soon to be realized from her tweets, posts, and instant messages. Further, the wise manager asks her to record a quick video sharing these sentiments so that the manager can post it on the brands’ YouTube channel, even further extending the reach and influence of her voice. Quite literally, her voiced opinion could be influencing hearts and minds via this emotional selling moment for thousands of potential clients and years to come. Smart, very smart!

Consider the time and workforce oriented to working and maintaining your social media outreach a very valuable investment. Savvy use of the array of opportunities to connect with your target audience one-on-one via that huge communication media channel of the Internet is awaiting you and your brand. Use it to chat. Use it to let your audience know of your special offerings. Use it to survey your guests. Use it to offer off-season specials, business packages, or even a package for a typically slow night or weekend. You could even create your own special day, featured week, or event-centered promotion like Official Gear Head Night where anyone bringing in a spark plug receives a free 20 minute massage to help you relax and get your sparks flying. How about the Home Schooler Special to visit the actual battlefields of Gettysburg and star in an actual reenactment of the battle, a once in a lifetime opportunity that your home schooler has to re-live history!

Imagine your website or brand video channel featuring action-packed videos of tours of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio which includes a teaser of an air show event that will be coming up at the museum on a special date package your organization is preparing. Grab the views of the Grand Canyon that stress in the audio that you really have to be here to experience the full grandeur and majesty of the new overlooks and the trails that lead down into the gorge. Share a mixture of video and still pictures of a cruise to Alaska that features a humpbacked whale inviting your target audience to come along, share the fun, and for anyone that captures a picture of a live humpback whale playing in the water, they will win a $200 discount off their next tour with you and your brand.

Audio’s can also lend to the brand experience you offer as you read a book, provide an audio copy of one of the great writing of Abraham Lincoln that can be listened to over and over including as you tour the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on President’s Day this year. Include a free ebook about how to set up a tent and store your food in the woods to keep wild animals away as you journey with us on a special tour of the scenic Appalachian Trail. Enjoy this retrospective collection of famous restaurants and hotels of the world from the actual visits by our clients as you share the moments, just picture your own journey making its way into our collection to share with our family of clients. Please let us know now where you will be going and when, then we will look forward to having our team review your pictures for the best moments to be included in our Families, Food, and Historic Hotels Collection in Pictures.

Literally, thousands of applications, some even potentially generating additional streams of revenue, can be yours as you plan your marketing and include offers and activities with social media, websites, video’s, audio’s, ebooks, and so much more. Let your creativity explore the possibilities and remember to connect at the heart with your target market for incredible results!

Eddie Powell, MBA is an online marketer, producer, and broker of extraordinary secrets of a marketing mind that can serve to multiply your revenues to astronomical heights. Visit http://www.TheSRN.com/Einstein to gain your Free Report and a special bonus. Brand marketing and assistance is available on a contract basis by contacting Eddie Powell directly at: Eddie@EddiePowell.com. Suffering a “Marketing Emergency”? Contact Eddie Powell now for dynamic financial strategies focused on results from Shared Resource Network, Inc.

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