Today, "Social media" has created a huge buzz all around and is ruling out the entire world of online marketing and other business related activities. It can be defined as the media for "social interaction". This communication media includes the use of web based and mobile technologies for interaction. There is a wide variety of social media, ranging from social sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr through social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Social media makes it easy to share the ideas, photos, videos, likes and dislikes, with the world at large. Besides this, it also helps joins friends, makes business contacts.
Most of the Social Media comes online in the following forms:-
1. Communication
• Blogs: Blogger (service), Livejournal, TypePad, Wordpress, Vox
• Microblogs / Presence apps: Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku
• Social networking: Avatars United, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock
• Social network aggregation: FriendFeed, Youmeo
• Events: Upcoming.org, Eventful, Meetup.com
2. Collaboration
• Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint
• Social bookmarking: Delicious, StumbleUpon
• Social News Sites: Digg, Mixx, Reddit
• Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp
3. Multimedia
• Photo sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug
• Video sharing: YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Revver
• Livecasting: Ustream, Justin.tv, Stickam
• Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter
4. Entertainment
• Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online
• Online gaming: World of Warcraft, Everquest, Age of Conan
• Game sharing: Miniclip.com
Now-a-days, ,many companies including those providing software development services have started the use Social media as a medium of their product promotion and other search engine optimization activities. Search engines spiders locate the content on the web, and social media aids search engines in that process.
Many business houses like software product development are now turning for social media bandwagon in order to achieve their marketing and public relations goal. It also helps them to disseminate information very fast as compared to other channels and more widespread coverage. Business houses can gather feedback directly from their target audience. It also improves branding and increases awareness. Social media has proved to be key component to complement SEO initiatives. As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key component of today's direct marketing, many social media techniques such as use of key phrases/words, meta-tags, link to blogs and websites improves search engine ratings significantly.
It is reported in a study that that 85% of businesses confirmed that social media directly contributed to the business's online exposure and resulted in increased revenue. But Social Media should be used in a wise manner as the wrong online brand strategy could put you at a viral social disadvantage and may even damage one's reputation. At times, social media for marketing and advertising could be more time consuming than companies expect. Recently an IT major, Microsoft Corporation, has turned to social media to advertise and popular its products especially Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft has setup a page on its own site to promote the campaign as well, complete with all of the videos and social media sharing options. Microsoft has been undertaking a fairly large scale new media campaign involving live events, a range of social platforms including, YouTube and Facebook.
Author Resource:
Nick Thomas is the author of this article. He has been writing articles for many software development companies like Q3 technologies. Moreover, he has been actively involved in providing useful content writing material related to Software documentation template .
For more details, feel free to visit http://www.q3tech.com
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