SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

• A social network service is an online service, platform, or site

that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or
social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or
activities
• Allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests
within their individual networks.
• Example:- Facebook and Twitter widely used worldwide;
MySpace and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North
America; Orkut in Asia and the Pacific Islands and Twitter,
Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn in India.
 Social networking sites and business
• social networks focus on non-profit business as ways to provide
both services and community to individuals with shared interests.
• The use of social network services in an enterprise context presents
the potential of having a major impact on the world of business and
work .
• One example of social networking being used for business
purposes is LinkedIn.com, which aims to interconnect
professionals. LinkedIn has over 40 million users in over 200
countries.
• Companies have found that social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build their brand image.
Pros of Networking in Business Online
 Branding and marketing: Corporations and major brands
do successfully use the more purely ‘social’ networking
sites, however, to market themselves.
 Exposure: Marketing your business online through social
networking websites gives you a huge number of
prospective clients or customers.
 More Pointed Exposure: When you use a blog to provide
information on your product or service, you'll boost the
number of people that come to your website specifically
for your product or service.
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 Inexpensive: Networking online is less expensive than
any other type of advertising or marketing. Consider as
the online version of word-of-mouth advertising.
 Find Partners: Networking is not always about getting the
customer; social networking online can help you get the
partners and employees you need as well.
 Gauge the Waters: Networking in business is a fantastic
way to find out what others think before you invest time
and money on promotions that are not profitable.
 ……..
 More acceptability: One of the biggest benefits of social
networking sites is the level of acceptability that they can
bring to your business.
 Your online reputation: Once it is established that there
are certain areas where you have an in depth knowledge
that can be of use to many people, you would have made
a reputation for your self online, and probably lead to
people recognizing you and your business as a reliable
brand.
 Some Cons of social networking sites:

 Time consuming: Unlike running advertising campaigns - PPC,

banners or others- marketing your products/services through social
sites requires investing a lot of time. Setting up an adword PPC
campaign for instance takes minutes. But since social site requires
interaction with users, the results are only achieved as long as a lot
of time is being devoted.
 Difficult to reach target audience: The fact that your target audience
is using different social networking sites makes it very complicated
to reach them. This necessitates running multiple accounts, each on
a different social site. Deciding the best options for your business is
not usually simple.