There are hundreds upon hundreds of social networking sites in the web.
Social Media Marketing is All About Choosing the Right Communities for You
You want to be involved with the ones that work best for your company – sites like Facebook, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Squidoo and Twitter are all great general sites for any company, but sites like ActiveRain, Trulia or CafeMom are for target niches that may be even more effective for you in the long run.
Its important to match your company with the niche you’re targeting. You are absolutely wasting time if you’re on a social site you shouldn’t be on, and that’s why you need to know that if you’re a finance company you should a site like Tip’d (think Digg for the finance industry) and bypass Digg itself altogether.
Digg and Newsvine do better with news stories, Propeller and Reddit do better with human and general interest stories, Stumbleupon does well with almost any topic. MySpace isn’t just for teens and Facebook Fan Pages are useful for any company, no matter the industry.
However, social sites are a waste of time if you set them up and never use them. You might as well have never set anything up at all. If you create an account and expect people to just find you and add you, you’re doing it wrong.
Further, you need to have specific strategies for each and every network you’re on. If you create a strategy but fail to execute it, your time was wasted. Mistakes like these are why many Social Media Campaigns don’t get anywhere.
Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, SMM allows you to go super niche – you could literally target a social community of pink-yarn knitting grandmas if that was your desire.
Thus the social networks you choose are entirely dependent on your company, your goals and your ultimate strategy.
Check out these 8 cool networking sites
Here are 8 cool tech-related social networking sites you can check out if you’re looking for communities dedicated to everything from web technology and development to gaming.
They all bring something interesting to the table and are all excellent resources for both major geeks and total noobs. Please comment below if you have additions:)
These are generally geek sites, but they are also great for newcomers and for people interested in expanding their horizons on the web.
- Slashdot – Highly popular social networking site focused on tech, web and gaming.
- Advogato - Free and open source software community for developers.
- Dzone – Great social networking and news site for developers of every stripe and color.
- CSS Globe – Community news site dedicated to CSS and web development.
- Pixel Groovy - Community based tutorial site for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, 3D Applications, Web Development, Operating Systems and more.
- Design Float – Social networking community dedicated to web design.
- DevelopersNiche – Social community dedicated to web development.
- Gaia – Great online community dedicated to all aspects of gaming and more.
“Corporate America is evil” “Big companies only care about themselves” “Corporations are ruthless and corrupt” ” Big business doesn’t care about consumers…”
Sound familiar?
Ok so first, I finally gave in to Twittering. Yup, that’s right I’m officially a Twitter addict. Its an awesome way to stay updated on what’s going on in the industry and the world at large but one thing bothers the hell out of me: its always at capacity and they had to “disable” the replies tab because they’re overflowing.
So its fun, but a royal pain in the ass when its over capacity. I’ve also found a lot of my fav bloggers and its amazing how much you can find out about someone from a Tweet;p
And yes, I tend to follow those who follow me, but only after I’ve checked them out and if I’ve found something I like. I think following someone or courting followers just to see your numbers rise is bs, quite frankly, and devalues a tool like Twitter in the first place.
On the other hand, I think Twitter is also easily molded. You can use it for whatever specific purpose you have in mind, whether its keeping up with industry news, making new friends or contacts in your industry or building up a fan base.
Thoughts?
