Basic Business Guide To Social Media - By: Kimberlie Hutson

Social media is basically about making the internet a more social place, traditionally, it was a way for people to understand what's useful on the internet based on social interaction, for example Amazon, have been saying for years that people who have brought this item have also brought this item, that is someone saying this is probably a good recommendation for you. Newer sites also offer something similar, they'll have the most read article today or most commented article today, the whole point of this is that you can see exactly what content is most relevant in real time.

The more modern version of social media is all about people being able to bring their friends on to the internet. It's become more mainstream recently with things like MySpace and Facebook where you actually log on and create a profile, and specifically call out your friends. Sites like twitter have made it easy to communicate on line without having to have a formal relationship.

Social media is important for a whole host of reasons, they main one being that because it fits so conveniently into most peoples lives it's becoming more and more popular, the more generic sites are constantly reporting massive growth figures and newer and more industry specific social media sites and networks are being created everyday. The more time people spend on these networks the more they're actually using them as their hub for the internet so the more important it is for brands and businesses to understand how to speak to these people on these platforms. With things like instant messaging you can see if the person is online, you can see when they've got the message and with some programmes, you can see when they'll reply. People don't have time to wait for email; social media can keep up with what going on in your life as it happens which means it can also keep up global news and current affairs as they happen to. This instant gratification and this need for people to understand what's going on and how people are communicating right now is really the key to social media.

So we've established what social media is and why it's so important, what you need to know now is, how can you use it to benefit your business? There's a huge number of ways for businesses to get started with social media, in most countries in the world it's becoming really popular, there are millions of websites, conferences, webinars etc all there to give free advice on how to use these sites. Start with just putting your brand out there and allowing people to follow and identify with it, as you get more technical you can start to do things like allowing people to add badges and custom applications to their profile, a badge can be something as simple as a picture of your product or a picture of your logo which people will start to generate round the web for you.

Another really simple way you can use social media to enhance your site, would be through an open social application, allowing people to login to your site with an existing login they have from a different account or site. External reports from people like ComScore say that as much as 70% of your users will drop off if you present them with a registration form, so allowing them to login with an account they've already created with another service can really increase engagement on your site.

One of the more generic examples of these would be Google's Friend Connect this is a tool that allows you very easily to let people log into your website using their account from another service, it's cut and paste code so it's as easy as putting a your tube video on your site, you just go to the Friend Connect site select the gadgets you want to install, configure them by changing the colour or the text, and then you're presented with some code, all you have to do is copy and paste that onto your website and people are able to login.

The best approach to social media is to just get out there with your brand name and message and have a go, so long as you have something productive and constructive to say, the chances are your target audience is out there and they're listening, all you have to do is find them.

About the Author

GuruOnline's international trade channel offers thousands of free, instantly streamed video interviews on international trade all from recognised industry experts. The content from this article is taken from our exclusive interviews with Google, who most of you would agree, know a thing or two about the interne!

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