Social Networking

Social networking can make all the difference in growing your business. Below are some pointers to get you started. We can assist our clients with all graphics, content, SEO and photos required for their social networking requirements.

Creating a profile

On each social network you can create a profile - this is a collection of information about you, which helps others to get to know you a bit without meeting you. This profile helps improve communication with new online acquaintances, sometimes referred to as 'friends'. What you need in order to create a profile:

• Bio document: As you begin to complete your social networking profiles, you'll realize that they all ask the same basic questions, so it might be a good idea to store your profile information in a Word document and profile photos in a folder for easy access. Keep adding information you add to your profiles into to this information, so that with the next profile, you can simply copy and paste the info when creating the profile. Most sites require a short paragraph about yourself, what you do and what your main interests are, so it is worth it to prepare this beforehand.
• Profile picture: Have a profile picture or two of yourself handy, approximately 200x200 pixels in size. It might be a good idea to use the same profile picture on all your networks, so that your online friends can begin to recognise you on various social networks.
• SEO: If you wish to be found on search engines via these profiles you create, then make sure you add relevant 'keywords' when you complete information about yourself. Within the social network you can also participate in activities such as discussions, which could come up in search engines.
• Contact info: Provide enough information so that someone who wants to do business with you can contact you via for instance Email, Skype, MSN, Mobile or landline.
• Portfolio: Provide links to where someone can see examples of your services or products. Many social networks supply space for showcasing your business and/or products for FREE!
• References: Ask existing/past clients to provide you with references, which is a very important mechanism for building trust with potential clients and partners.
• Usernames and passwords: It might be very difficult to remember all your usernames and passwords, let alone the links of all the social networks you sign up for, so it will be very useful to write all the info down and keep them in a secure place -  on computer as well as offline. This document could also be turned into you 'social networking operation plan' if you specify next to each social network how much time to allocate per day for that social network.
• Online presence: Once you are set up with all these profiles, it is very important to have a 'presence' which means you participate in discussions, create discussions, notes, comments, blogs, and publish other media, such as photos, videos, podcasts and interact with users. All these activities helps you to build an online relationships and your online community.
• Safety: It is very important to work on a computer that is secure and keep all your information in trusted hands. Loggin into personal accounts at internet cafe's is generally not the best idea, as one never knows good their security is and how much spy-ware is lurking on their computers. If other users become offensive, then you can block them from your profile.
• Social Networking Rules: Each social network has rules, and if those are broken, you can end up losing your profile and all the hard work you have put into the network, so make a point of finding out what you can and cannot do on the site. Spam is of course never welcome.
• Choose wisely: Social networking can be very time consuming, so choose the social networks which would have the most impact for your business.
• Link to your profiles: Create links from your website to your social networking profiles and from your profiles to your website.

10 essential social networks

Below are the ten social networks, in order of importance, through which every company could gain incredible value to market their company online. (We are creating an instruction PDF for each of the social networks mentioned below to guide you on how to make the most effective use of each one of them). For more  information to any questions please get in touch with us.

	Skype www.skype.com Make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files or even your desktop actions with other Skype users.
	LinkedIn www.linkedin.com LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking, allowing registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. It can be used to find jobs, people, business opportunities, recommendedations and much more!
	Delicious www.delicious.com Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.
	Blogger www.blogger.com Blogger is a FREE blog publishing system owned by Google. A blog gives you your own voice on the web and allows your voice to be heard by all those wanting to hear your story.
	Facebook www.facebook.com Facebook one of the most successful global social networking. It offers numerous functionalities to explore!
	Twitter www.twitter.com Twitter is a FREE social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages and links known as tweets.
	Google Adwords https://Adwords.google.com AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines.
	Flickr www.flickr.com Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular website for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.
	YouTube www.youtube.com YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.
	Slideshare www.slideshare.com

The icons we used are from a FREE icon's site.

How to build a thriving online network

A thriving online network is relationship-based and requires thousands of interactions, which means that you are committed for the long haul! Here are some pointers:

"People have been interacting with other people for much longer than the internet has been around, so give them the tools, and set them free" - Rolf Skyberg