Top 10 Social Media Sites for Business
Twitter – Track what people are saying about your brand, reach out to customers who are trend setters and early adopters, gain expert advice, and make announcements.
- LinkedIn – Learn who your competitors are in the area, track your professional connections, and use the answers section to share and build your industry knowledge. LinkedIn has some of the best business networking online.
- Wordpress – As the best blogging platform, you need to be experienced with either the Wordpress.com (hosted by wordpress) or the Wordpress.org (hosted by you) platforms. They are driving much of the blogging innovation today and have the strongest support community.
- Delicious – Delicious is simple online book marking. The more people that bookmark your website or blog posts, the more likely others will notice it. It is a very easy thing to set and forget. Sign up, bookmark your land pages and blog posts that are strong resources or great lists, and encourage others to bookmark you on Delicious as well.
- Stumble Upon – Another social linking site, Stumble’s toolbar makes it simpler, easier, and more successful than any other social linking site out there.
- Wikipedia – Many would not consider this a social part of the web, but it definitely is. As a crowdsourced encyclopedia, the content of Wikipedia and other wiki’s expands daily. Contribute to Wikipedia where you’re interested. Learn about wiki’s and how the community and content plays is an important skill.
- Youtube – You should, at a minimum, learn how to use Youtube, the original viral king. If you have the resources, put together some video content to feature here and anywhere else you can integrate it. Video takes your content from the doldrums to the dynamic.
- Slideshare – The Youtube for slide shows, it plays more easily to the business crowd, while maintaining a natural viral edge. This community, similar to Twitter, contains many trend setters and early adopters. Putting together quality content through this channel can be a valuable investment.
- Facebook – The fastest growing, youngest, hippest, and most tech savvy of all the networks, Facebook has a lot to offer. While the audience and structure of Facebook do not allow for great marketing for you to extend your brand reach, it offers much more beyond that. The addiction of many of Facebook’s users, its unique application options, and its “gateway drug” status among social networks makes this a must have for any business’ social media portfolio.
- Myspace – Myspace seems to be loosing favor in much of the cutting edge online world, but there is still real value. If you are a photographer, musician or bootstrapped home business person, the networking on Myspace provides many opportunities. Beyond that, the vastness of Myspace’s user base is unmatched. They are also beginning to fix many issues and add more Facebook-esque features that will improve the product.
