What is Social Media?
Social Media is a vehicle to share information with a broad audience twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to being any form of online publication or presence that allows users to engage in multi-directional conversations, it is a way to build relationships with the public. Online tools allow businesses to keep in touch with customers and easily update them on what’s new, whether it is products, services, events, an interesting insight or a new hire to the team. Basically, Social Media is the “wave of the now.”
What to know about Social Media
Social Media …

Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, LinkedIn, Flikr, Photobucket, Ning, Xanga, WordPress, …. The list of social media platforms goes on and on.  Some overlap with each other, others have no channels of compatibility, and most of the services that would allow you to synchronize the content of multiple services are annoyingly piecemeal.

Enter Ping.fm.

Ping.fm has compiled a list of 40 blogging sites, social networks, online status recorders, social bookmarking services, and photo sharing sites - each and every one of which can be updated individually or in groups from within the Ping.fm interface.

See a service you don’t yet use?  Ping.fm will …

Link building is one of the key elements to Search Engine Optimization.  The more reputable sites you can get to refer people to your site, the better your search engine results will be.  You will usually need a well known and positive reputation in order to garner such links, but there are some small steps you can take on your own to get the ball rolling.
There You Are!
I don’t know about you, but when I first decide where I want to go shopping, one of the first questions I ask myself is, “what’s near me?”  I’d be willing to bet …

LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube… once only visited for personal use, these sites are now being used for business purposes. We all hear about them and see their icons everywhere. And, we feel out of touch or like we are dropping the ball if we don’t have profiles on all of them.

It is true that social media sites help business. But how? Most of the case studies we read about are about big business and their bigger than life social media campaigns. How can small business benefit?

The truth is—at least our opinion of it—that there are no step-by-step rules to follow …

You did your homework of understanding your audience when planning your site. You looked at the demographics and at the needs of each audience that might end up browsing your pages: existing clients, prospects, partners, and internal staff. You organized your content to match those needs and came up with a suitable navigation menu. You even paid attention to their screen resolutions and most used browser versions. Is that it?

How about finding out your audience’s online behavior? What sites are these users browsing when they are NOT on your site?

Why would you want to know? Knowing where these visitors “hang out” online …