Using Online Social Networking Sites for Business and Fun
Social media in the form of free social networks and online bookmarking have grown in popularity in the last five years. But it’s hard to know which online social network is right for you if you haven’t tried all of them. That’s where social media reviews come in. When reading the reviews, however, you may find vastly different assessments about their content. Many folks fight for their choice of online social networking sites vehemently. That’s probably because the site they fell in love with is one of the few they tried and all their time was taken up with one site before they knew what was happening. Many who are asssertive about defending one site aren’t aware of the variations between Internet business networking sites, social bookmarking sites or sites that offer online social networking just for fun. Many are not aware that there are also social networking sites, like Capazoo, that use micropayments to incentivize users to visit the site and promote it to others.
Many social media users aren’t aware of the differences between social networks because there is enormous overlap of features on the various sites. As an example, HubPages can be used for either business networking or to just have fun. There are thousands upon thousands of user-driven free Ning online social networking communities, such as Book Market, which specialize in focused interests. These social network sites are important due to their emphasis on people’s niche interests. Communities focused on interests, such as book readers, abound. Online social networking websites like Bookcrossing have everything from chats, book reviews and online bookshelves. Another powerful form of online networking sites is online social bookmarking, because it opens up new worlds of information storage and retrieval. Sites that feature social bookmarking, such as Mister Wong, allow logged-in users to save their online bookmarks for free. This platform type is also great for people who conduct searches, because tags that allow for easy searching can be assigned to each bookmark. The ability to use keyword tagging also is of value to Web marketers, because backlinks result from the use of bookmarks. The individual links aren’t that meaningful yet when a site has many of them, it can change the amount of search engine traffic it receives. And with sites such as Digg, if a URL is posted on one of these bookmarking sites that has good pagerank, top search engine rankings can be had for that page if it has good keyword tags and was submitted properly.
Social media boundaries become even less defined on sites like Yahoo Buzz, which feature both social networking and bookmarking. They are used for bookmarking but also are equally powerful for marketing and socializing. You can make a lot of friends on these sites and blog posts featured on these social networking sites have the potential to rank well in Google and other search engines. This makes these type of sites genuine gold to Internet marketers.