Since the conception of society, Social Networking has been into existence and human beings have always wanted to live in social environments. A person’s social network consists of people with whom he wishes to be in touch; it can be family, friends, school colleagues, office colleagues etc. Earlier this connection was maintained generally through phone and e-mail.
But with the advent of technology, Social Networking Sites have emerged as the most popular medium to communicate with friends, family and people from all around the world who share similar interests. Social networking sites offer huge sources of activities for every age-groups; be it teenagers willing to connect with friends, housewives willing some social contacts, musicians promoting their music, celebrities willing to connect with their fans or organizations willing to promote their businesses and create brand awareness.
Social Networking sites use of numerous social media outlets and online communities to generate publicity, increase awareness of a product, advertise about a brand or an event and also help organizations in gaining website traffic or customer attention.
In recent years, these sites have come up as the best source for organizations to build their own target audience base. In order to pitch their product or brand, businesses always need to understand the customers better and hence they need to gather more information about them.
Shopping and social networking websites, like Facbeook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and hi5 sites gather a lot of useful information about online users and therefore, these are become tremendously useful for business enterprises to track consumer behavior.
Facebook, with more than 3 billion monthly active users remains the undisputed king of social media. The advanced tools and functions of this website allow users to access files that are more than 5 years old. These wonderful features have helped Facebook in becoming the most influential tool of SMM (Social Media Marketing) and SMO (Social Media Optimization).
Social Networking and Media Sites have been a great marketing and branding tool for businesses. Specially small and medium business enterprises are now a days using the social media sites for advertising their products, brands and services by setting up a business page free of cost and then, initiating interactions with the visitors and potential buyers. With RSS feeds, Social Networking Sites also give organizations the opportunity to keep their followers up to date through RSS feeds.
Well-planned approach to SMM and SMO through social networking sites can help an organization to promote its business, generate leads, create proper brand awareness and achieve its business goal.
Positive aspects of Social Media and Networking Sites on businesses:
- Gives an innovative platform to share and spread your content
- Can give tons of traffic in a very short span of time
- Helps in building large target audience base without much effort
- Real time interaction with visitors and instant feedback.