Facebook is the power hitter in social networking today, and is likely to drive the most activity and a fair share of the innovation in social networking in 2012. But it's not the only company driving things forward.

Here's are five ways social networking is likely to play out in the coming year.

1. Mobile social networking means good news for new social startups

In the U.S., the majority of consumers will soon have smartphones (Neilsen puts the figure at 44% today). Smartphones are about the most important thing to happen to social networking since Harvard sent its acceptance letter to Mark Zuckerberg.

2. Twitter makes big impact with brand marketers

While Twitter's new brand pages won't eat into big advertising or marketing budgets in 2012, the new business-friendly features will make an impact. Twitter is a highly effective platform for spreading brand messages via consumer/fans, and it doesn't take much to create an effective Twitter-based campaign.

3. Social Networking will tell the tale for the 2012 presidential election

We have seen how social feedback and link-sharing can bomb a presidential campaign: the YouTube and Web reaction to Rick Perry's "Strong" ad. And in 2008 the MoveOn group might have made the critical difference in the Obama campaign.

4. Google+ remains a critical success but a consumer flop

Google+ has a lot of good features, but it needs much more than that to take on Facebook and Twitter. Even Google's tacit promotion of Google+ on its other services and toolbars won't be enough to make it part of the daily diet of social networks for the hundreds of millions of users that Facebook has in its thrall.

5. Facebook and Yelp: Social network IPOs do well

For all the bad-mouthing of the Zynga IPO, it's not doing all that badly. As of this writing, it's down 5% from its offering price, and the stock has only be trading since December 16.

Read complete at cNet

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SAN FRANCISCO — In an unusually tame appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit, Salesforce.com (NASDAQ:SFDC) CEO Marc Benioff declined to lash out at rival Oracle and its mercurial CEO Larry Ellison and even praised the company for its success.

Web 2.0 Summit co-host Tim O'Reilly engaged the straight-shooting Benioff in a word-association game by throwing out company names such as Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), HP (NYSE:HPQ), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) and asking the CEO to say what came to mind.

When O'Reilly said "Oracle," Benioff paused and answered in diplomatic fashion: "I think that they are actually a strong company because of all of the acquisitions they've made, and they have a very good strategy."

At O'Reilly's prompting, Benioff did, however, reiterate his caution that companies must "beware the false cloud" Oracle and other virtualization software vendors offer as private clouds that come on disks. True cloud computing, he explained, is hosted, multi-tenant and lives on the Web—not on a disk.

That false cloud discussion has fiery pretext and comes one month after Oracle's Ellison denigrated Salesforce.com at the Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco Sept. 21. Ellison essentially wrote off Salesforce.com as a one-offsoftware as a service (SAAS) application for CRM.

One day later at the same conference, Benioff said Oracle's new Exalogic server boxes are "false cloud" computing environments.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Benioff cited Facebook, Amazon and eBay as examples of cloud-computing enablers. "That's not about building a virtualized machine inside your data center and saying, "Oh, I have cloud, too." 

Benioff actually saved his greatest praise for Facebook, which he claimed epitomizes what the next-generation consumer operating system should be like. "Everything I want in a consumer operating system, I see in Facebook," Benioff added.

When O'Reilly asked if Benioff looked to model Salesforce.com after Facebook, Benioff said "yes" without explicitly saying yes, noting that he "would like to be doing as many amazing things as Facebook is doing."

He sees Facebook is setting the direction for where the enterprise application space is going, from the way it works on tablet computers and smartphones, to its ability to easily enable third-party developers to write software for the Facebook platform.

He noted that it's extremely relevant for his enterprise customers, because Facebook is where their customers are going, and it's how their employees are being trained on how to collaborate with each other and work with customers on the social network of 800 million-plus users.

Salesforce.com has already taken several steps to leverage the environment Facebook has wrought, including two significant software purchases.

Facebook's allure to boost CRM in Salesforce.com's own business led Benioff and Co. to acquire Heroku, which enables developers to build Facebook applications from within Facebook itself using Ruby on Rails, Java, Python and other languages.

Benioff and his team earlier this year also acquired social analytics provider Radian6 to help it get a handle on reputation and brand management. Salesforce.com uses Radian6 software to provide social media clarity across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud as well as the company's Force.com application platform.

The CEO also lamented the lack of engineering and other high-tech talent he and at least 100 companies he knows of are experiencing.

Despite the recession, he said that not enough people in the U.S. understand the economic opportunity that lies in high tech and that we need to show them the possibilities.

Source: eWeek.com

 

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The emergence and popularity of social networking sites have made marketing convenient and cheap. Social media services assist companies in identifying their target audience easily and reach them quickly. Social networking sites like blogs, photo and video sharing networks, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. help companies connect with people and share information about the latest products and services offered.

Social media assists in creating brand awareness

Social media networks are frequented by millions of people across the globe. If you can create and maintain accounts in various social networking sites, you will have more visibility. If you are active in these forums, you can initiate conversations and attract potential customers. This ability is greatly helpful to companies that haven't yet established a brand name.

When you post videos and photos on social media services, make sure that they are both informative and entertaining. Make your videos interesting so that your target audience is compelled to share it with others. If your online community in Facebook or Twitter is highly interactive and entertaining, you can boost brand loyalty and increase traffic to your website as people will be tempted to visit your community often.

The brand loyalty will be increased also due to the fact that you are engaged in personal conversations with the customers. The customers tend to trust a company that is prompt and friendly and invites suggestions and recommendations from them.

Pitch products or services in an interactive way

Although advertisements can popularize your products, you can promote them more effectively if you have interactive communities on various social networking platforms. Internet users are bombarded with thousands of online ads daily and hence not many of them click them. But if you are promoting your products through the social media, you can discuss your products with the prospective customers and let them know their specifications and advantages.

Assists in market research

The social media networks assist you to know about the needs of the customers and bring out products accordingly. You can also know what your customers think about your products and track the links and sites they visit to see the kinds of products and services they prefer. Also, most people tend to express their opinion on social media platforms. You can use the information you gain from these sites to tweak your products a bit if necessary to be more appealing to customers. 

A cost-effective method

A primary advantage of social media networks is that they are cheap and anyone can make use of them for various promotional purposes. You do not need to have much technical skills to create and maintain a social networking page. Most of these social networks are straightforward and visually appealing, making it easy for you to operate them. Also this feature enables your target audience to read your messages and view your product information easily.  

Social media services are a cost-effective means to reach your target audience. They help you enhance your business by establishing personal relationships with your prospective customers. 

Read more

 

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The present-day online marketing experts and digital promotion pundits lay impetus on the importance on the use of the ever-expanding service of social media. The social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and others offer a global platform to its users to communicate with the world at large and connect with new and existing friends.

One of the most important reasons for the rapid growth and relevance of social media in online business promotion is the wide reach of the social networking sites. These sites have a high traffic inflow of users, who flock the site to access their personal accounts, upload and share videos and photos, connect with friends and families and also touch base with new friends and connections. The high user traffic on the social networking sites help websites are the main target for the marketers and business owners who can offer information about their company, products and services on these sites and develop a sound consumer base. 

The other prime reason for the use of social media is the rising popularity and its global reach in every nook and corner of the globe. People from different walks of life, different regions of the world and belonging to different economic strata of the society comprise the user traffic on the social networks. The diverse composition of the social media users help the business owners identify their target audience and interact with them on these sites. Hence, they can reach a wide audience composition and develop a good consumer base.  

In addition, the social media platforms are being widely used by the online marketing experts for corporate promotion and brand building on the Internet can be attributed to the "personal" factor and the instant feedback factor. The social media sites offer a personal level of conversation platform to the marketers and site users. They can communicate, share information, discuss queries and issues, post questions and answers and create conversation threads at a personal level. It can also involve more than one person in the conversation; hence, a group of individuals can participate in group discussions and mail chains etc.

The social media platforms offers instant feedback to the business owners since everything on the website is instantaneous and quick. These sites are generally open platforms wherein users can post comments, reply, discuss and start a conversation chain with friends and anyone who is part of a conversation. The feedback generation and instant response on the sites help marketers understand the mindset of the people and also simultaneously improve on their services. In this regard, they will prove to be fruitful to client servicing of the businesses.

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By now you probably know that a social networking presence for your small business is no longer just a luxury – it has become an expectation. Today, your overall online presence must include not only a great website, but also a consistent social networking strategy that is integrated with your other marketing assets. Social networking is here to stay, and your business needs to get social with a solid presence and an ongoing strategy to create the credibility and visibility needed for success today.

Here are three steps that can help you create a sustainable social marketing strategy for your small business:

1. Build an Integrated System

By building an integrated social marketing "system," you can connect your social profiles, your website, and other marketing efforts so that your branding is consistent and your online initiatives all work together seamlessly. For example, your Facebook page should be able to "talk" to your web site, your Twitter "tweets" can be displayed on your Facebook page, and your blog posts can be RSS-fed to your LinkedIn profile. An integrated system means that you can update your marketing with a "write once, publish to many" model that saves time and ensures consistency across all online channels.

You may need some outside professional expertise to help with the integration work, but it is well worth it in the time you'll save updating and posting to your social profiles. Integrated social posts can also drive additional visibility as information is "liked" and shared among users and their contacts across multiple platforms.

2. Create a Content Pipeline

Most businesses already have plenty of available marketing material just waiting to be used as social content. For example, you could use your monthly newsletter as social content by dividing up the articles each month and using them as individual posts. Or, you can share news and developments in your industry that you find on other websites or on professional association blogs. Finding content to use in a social marketing strategy doesn't have to be burdensome, especially if you use something that we call a "Content Pipeline."

A Content Pipeline can be as simple as printing out a monthly calendar, then selecting the days you want to post or add new content to your social profiles and other marketing channels. For example, if your newsletter has three articles, use one article each week as a new post, then share a link to an interesting blog post (on your website or elsewhere) as the content for the fourth week. Then, let your integrated system do the work for you and publish the weekly information to all of your other online channels automatically. An integrated system also enables you to pre-schedule your social updates to run automatically, so you can pre-schedule an entire month's worth of updates all at the same time.

3. Be Consistent with Updates

This is the step where many small businesses seem lose their momentum – ongoing updates and participation. It's not surprising that this is difficult for many small businesses, since they typically do not have the staff or additional time to commit to consistent, weekly (or monthly) updates on their social profiles. However, it is critical to add new information, posts, and comments on a regular basis. Without consistent activity, your social networking efforts will do little to promote your business, bring in new leads, or help build customer loyalty. With sporadic or inconsistent updates, you also open the door for your competitors to gain momentum, visibility, and new customers, while your social profiles just sit there with old, stale, or missing information.

If you don't have the internal staff or time to execute an ongoing social marketing strategy, then hire a firm to help you. Having a business presence on the social networks today is really only the first step; you must also commit to a sustained, ongoing effort to feed and care for your social marketing strategy in order for that strategy to work for your business.

Read more

 

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The search engines spilled the beans that linking on social networking and webpage ranking are impacting each other directly. Google and Bing accepted this fact, which was alleged by the companies dealing in SEOs worldwide. To get such an authentication from the biggies of this field is globally acclaimed significant step in World Wide Web.

In this constantly varying web world, such information is very crucial for all sections involved in digital marketing. The complete incident will be scrutinized to understand the ranking pattern of the search engines through social networking. The search engine representatives confirmed the following:

Organic search and page rankings are adjusted after the engines catch special or sudden rise in popularity among the shared content. The authority of a social networking user could be under the scanner or highlighted in case, their particular article is liked or retreated frequently beyond certain number of counts. The followers of such member may be under tabs to find out the relevance of the tweets or likes, the reason for such high count can be traced as well.

Authority of the person sending such high number of tweets or referenced articles is considered. Internet allows us to mask real identities at a certain level, so if well known identity is associated with these web likings, Google and Bing do consider what is legitimate or not.

Priorities of links are assigned after considering the individual involved in the popularizing of particular site on the network. In certain scenarios Google highlights the page ranking as per the author and popularity of the web page.

The "Social authority" of Bing and the "Author authority" of Google are designed to analyze the sharing activities involving links of websites and their sky rocketing popularity. To really understand the complex indexing and ranking process we need to go into depth of the sharing method.

Recent or older sharing period can give hints to the validity of a popular site. When a RSS feed is first released it can be important, but as time passes by the likeability decreases. Interesting articles can be in circulation for years though.

It is obvious that something is fishy when one account is promoting few product hundreds of times, rather than normal scenario where one account engaged in liking hundreds of different products.

Search engines may scrutinize the anchor text and the links related to the posted and favored article. It can give away the secret, if an article was genuinely liked or has been tampered with. Following the clicks and other activities of the account can signal, if the link is just given weight or it was relevant for real.

Twitter/Facebook can disclose, if the links were authentic or not by analyzing the friends and followers of that particular account. Spam and illegitimate content will have a distinct set of fans or friends compared to the real time people engaging in social networking. The source of your link can also lead the search engines to the friends and members of the popularized webpage. If the source encouraging a link is a well known authority, the next related sender also becomes crucial.

Search engines have always been many steps forward from the SEOs in tracing and understanding the working of spam and dishonest rank builders. The search engines can check for interactions between the members and friends popularizing the particular link and find out the reality. Valid friends sharing true interests can easily be distinguished by the powerful search engines from the fake page lovers.

The patterns of conversation, sharing activities and history of a particular authority account can highlight the webpage with real or spam content. The search engines can inspect how regular tweets and sharing of information among a group of individuals mean more, than another section rarely interacting online.

SEO and social media networking to promote products can improve a lot, if these ideas are understood well and used for our benefit. The prime aspect of this revelation will show how spam could be involved and affect users with personal accounts. The count of social networking users is reaching beyond millions now-a-days.

Driving traffic to your website has become more competitive and every move on the social media website is being watched closely by the search engines. We can be smart, but it may take a while before we outsmart the geniuses working on keeping the reputation of search engines high.

Web marketing section is improvising itself, beating out illegitimate and spammed content efficiently at a very fast pace. SEOs working religiously along with the search engine traits are happy about this aspect for now. Only time can tell what will be the next big step to promote products online, either the straight approach or a very twisted way.

Read more

 

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You do not need to hire a full-time marketer to manage your accounts or join the Social Media Orlando Meetup group to get started. You do not even need to do a search engine query on "Social Media Orlando". The following tips can help get the most techno-phobic businessperson started with social media marketing.

Tip #1 Just Start

Sign up for a few social networking sites. It is easy to sign up and create a full profile. Be creative with your profile and have fun. Social media marketing is not difficult. Jumping into the game is the best way to start. It is easy to overanalyze the process to the point that it becomes overwhelming. 

Tip #2 Keep Going

Keep your profile up-to-date and maintain an active presence on your accounts. Social media marketing is a long-term effort. You should dedicate at least a few minutes every day to posting updates, making friends, following other users, and engaging your readers and fans. Make social media marketing a daily habit. 

Tip #3 Focus your Time and Energy

Once you have established your presence on a few choice networking sites, resist the temptation to join dozens of sites, post hundreds of updates a day, and continuously monitor how your updates are doing. These activities can easily eat up all your time and get you banned for spam. While social marketing takes some time, you should make your actions count. Only post updates that are informative and useful. Focus your energy on a few social sites. Check for responses to your posts only once or twice per day.

Tip #4 Add value 

Give your followers and friends a reason to come back. Only post content others would find useful. It can be an interesting link, a helpful tip or a promotion. If your content is useful, your followers will come back to your profile and will share the content with others. On the other hand, an annoying stream of updates which say "read my blog" and "buy my products" will cost credibility, friends, followers and customers.

Tip #5 Give first

More people will follow you on Twitter, if you follow them first. If you write recommendations for others on LinkedIn, then they will be more likely to reciprocate. If you share interesting links written by others, more people will post your links. Giving and receiving is the basis for all social interactions, including those online.

Tip #6 Focus on content

The internet is about content. If you focus on creating quality content on your social networking sites, others will share it. Marketing tricks may help get a few links and a short-term boost in the search engines, but content is the key to long-term, online marketing success. Quality content will market itself, because others will automatically share it.

Tip #7 Interact with your followers

If the internet as a whole is about content, social media is about interaction and building community. Respond to your followers' and friends' comments. Those interactions will build trust over time. Your followers will see that you care enough to respond to them.

Read more

 

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There are plenty of methods to drive traffic to your website that it may be mind-boggling to the stage that you don’t understand were to start. Nicely I find it simpler to break it down into two classes, It is possible to drive traffic to your site that are FREE and there are ways that you have to pay for. Both are extremely effective but it depends on what is in the bank, particularly if you are just starting out. Therefore of course I would select totally free very first, the free method which i find really profitable is actually Social Networking.

A lot of internet users fit in with at least one social network website.

When it comes to social networking, there are lots of individuals who think about on the internet friendships or even online relationships. Whilst these kinds of relationships would be the most typical, are you aware that social networks are also employed for businesses? Actually, which was initially the way it got started. If you are a small business owner, especially one that operates an internet business, there is a method in which you can use social networking sites to your benefit.

There are social networking sites that are created for business owners. These websites won’t allow you to share your business info with other business owners, but it will even allow you to develop close relationships along with the ones that share an interest that is similar to your own. Basically, this means that you could not only discover useful business info, but you could also walk away with a brand new business partner or perhaps a new friend.

Social networking allows the smaller businesses to develop because they are able to reach a larger quantity of individuals with using these network platforms cheaper. Nevertheless, additionally, it enables the bigger companies to take advantage of the social media to extend to a larger volume of clients, as well.

Examples of this tend to be Myspace, Tweets, and LinkedIn, this kind of press has increased to some volume of worldwide social networks, which means that advertisement may extend to a larger range of clients since they’re in a position to have multiple languages.

If you work with your web web site to earn money with advertising applications, such as affiliate marketing programs or even Let’s Consider Google Adsense, you may want to strategy websites in a different way. Because you won’t always have a specific product or service to focus on, you will need to strategy these websites as though these were individual web sites. If your web site talks about being a cat owner, it might be a good idea to state your love for felines inside your profile. Following doing this, it might be acceptable and never always regarded as spam to include a hyperlink to your website. As with all other types of websites, websites ought to help to increase the number of web page views your website gets. In most cases, more page views mean much more mouse clicks meaning more income for you personally.

Social Networking only works if individuals are attracted to this. So based on exactly what subject or even market that you are trying to promote about the internet sites will rely on whether it’s the red hot issue at that specific period. The actual goals that you are trying to achieve tend to be: an increase in link-abilty, simple guide tagging, mash-up, backlinks, as well as helping content material journey.

Rule of thumb is that you simply need to make certain you participate together with your customers, you want to be participating in blogs and the discussion boards. understand your target audience. You need to know exactly what appeals to a specific group. You should keep in mind that few people will love a person.

I pointed out mash-up earlier, for individuals who by no means heard of the word or you don’t fully realize what it really indicates, it’s to combine content from more than one source in to 1 encounter. The mashup can be used to collect feedback on a project your working on be it an internet site, blog or perhaps an post.

Websites are also well-liked simply because they are available in a lot of different formats. Web sites such as Google! 360 as well as Bebo concentrate on a multitude of different subjects. This means that just about anyone can join. However, there are other social networks out there that have a particular concentrate. These focuses might be on the specific faith, politics following, or even hobby. The majority of specialty social networking sites restrict the individual’s that can participate in their own system; therefore, making your own experience more fun.

Social networking websites may benefit all website owners, particularly those who’re looking to make a profit with their web sites. You can do this one of two ways, through promoting some thing or through relying on revenue from marketing. For those who have a website that is promoting products or services, you might find it easier to use social networking sites to your advantage. This is because, if you wish, you could do this product or service spotlights. You could also showcase one of the services or products that your web site sells. This could either be done directly on your user profile web page or even on the blog page, which is provided by the majority of websites.

As possible effortlessly see, there are a variety of various ways that you are able to market your online website, no matter what kind of web site you have or even that which you use it for. By keeping the above mentioned points in your mind, you should be capable of seeing a rise in your own page sights, very quickly at all.

 

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For several years, social networking only revolves within the personal level and is really popular with students, musicians and the like. But since it has become one of the greatest phenomena that hit the internet, businesses of all shapes and sizes have recognized the need to jump into the bandwagon. Thus, small, medium and large-scale enterprise are running around the internet, establishing communities, building connections, enhancing relationships just to take advantage of social networking business has to offer. Some of these business owners though just jumped into the bus without really knowing what should be done to make the ride worthwhile.  And so they make mistakes after mistakes, wasting all their money, time and efforts in the type of social networking that doesn't bring them any good.

One blunder in social networking business that should be avoided is inactivity. Some businesses start strong and aggressive only to find out that it was just a false start. Then the online activities start to dwindle and then nothing. Updates are very important in social networking. All data in the business' social networking site or profile must be current and up-to-date to keep customers engaged and interested. Of course this is in connection with another blunder which is creating uninteresting and unhelpful content in the site. It doesn't help that a business is always active yet, it is active in producing boring and unimportant social media. Business owners must never forget that the life of social networking is the connections and the relationships that they make with the people in the community. Give these people irrelevant and useless information and you just disconnected yourself from the relationship.

The greatest blunder of all is spamming; this is but a major turn-off as it is not only unhelpful but also very annoying. Spamming the social networking business site with unsolicited ads and emails will only lead to your business despised and blocked. If you really wanted to make social networking work for you, never ever commit this mistake. True, social media can be a very good advertising tool but what's acceptable is just a little of everything; too much of something will only kill your social networking efforts.

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And it's no surprise that many companies have been using social media online to connect and communicate with their customers online.

But the benefits of social networking aren't always immediately apparent to some. And that is especially true for businesses who are interested in having a lot of control over their brand name and brand image. Convincing some that every business has something to gain from online media marketing can be difficult. It can be hard to see how Web 2.0 marketing can result in a positive return on investment (ROI).

When it comes to convincing your boss or colleagues to invest in social networks, it helps to have a plan.

Here the 7 steps you can take when it comes to selling social media marketing to your boss or company.

1. Explain how social media is an unbeatable research tool. When a company is effectively tapped into the social media landscape, they get to hear a lot of chatter that they wouldn't hear otherwise. Those engaged in social media marketing campaigns will be able to monitor channels for any mention of their company, competitors, industry, clients and potential clients. Setting up a social media marketing listening campaign lets a company know who is participating and what is happening.

Thanks to tools and services like Quantcast, Alexa and TweetMeme, it is now easier than ever to track and measure what people are talking about online. This information is invaluable for developing future marketing strategies, both online and offline.

2. Match the benefits of Web 2.0 marketing with your company's goals. Whether your company or your client is a service provider, a business to business specialist or a business to consumer retailer, there's a social media marketing strategy for them. But in order to convince others of online media marketing's benefits, you have to be aware of the company's goals. Do they want to enhance their customer service operations? To they want to reduce costs? Do they want to manage their reputation? Social networking can do a lot to help achieve all those goals. When you know what your boss or company wants, you can show how this will help them achieve it.

3. Start small. Even if they're not bullish on social network marketing, your boss or others at your company are probably aware of the range of social applications and services that are out there. They may think that launching a social marketing campaign will be a huge undertaking, one that will require many work hours just to set everything up.

But that's not necessarily true. A Web 2.0 marketing campaign doesn't have to include a setting up a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account, a blog and a YouTube channel. In fact, it's often easier to start small. Figure out which service will best match the stated goals of your boss or your company. It may be something as simple as registering a Twitter account and starting to engage people via tweets. Starting small requires little time and less cost. But the results can become apparent quickly. You can even begin to measure such results with a tracking service like Quantcast.

4. Set up a strategy and follow it. A social media campaign can appear strange and different, even to people who have plenty of marketing experience. If you don't have a clear strategy for implementation and execution, reactions to your plan will be understandably skeptical to your social media marketing strategy. Take time to explain each step of the plan, describe why it's being done and how it will benefit the company.

5. Look for examples of social media success. Lots of businesses, large and small, well-known and unknown, have been able to already achieve a lot with social media marketing. From Charles Schwab to FujiFilm to Goodwill, there are countless examples of companies who have been able to successfully use social networking to achieve their corporate goals. Find them and broadcast the results.

6. Anticipate Questions. It's natural for people to be skeptical of new things and new ideas. While you may be well aware of the benefits of social media marketing, keep in mind that resistance may simply be the result of some people being overly cautions. That's why it's important to anticipate any and all questions or objections someone may raise. Find good case studies and other examples of social media marketing successes. Have these on hand to use as examples. Here are some common questions that skeptical bosses may have about social media marketing:

• Our customers aren't online. This line of reasoning is being used less and less, but some companies may still think this is true. The truth is, at the cusp of the 2010s, nearly everyone is online. Online activity isn't restricted to any gender, income level, education level, or location. There are countless surveys to prove this. One of the largest survey groups, the Pew Research Center, frequently provides data for online use, broken down by several categories.
• What if someone writes something bad? This is a common fear among those resistant to social media marketing. But studies show that when companies engage with customer complaints and criticisms, they end up looking better than before. Mention that people will likely complain whether you're engaged in social media or not. It's better for nearly every brand to appear involved with its customers. Even the angry ones.
• It's too time-consuming. After setting up social media marketing accounts on networks like Facebook and Twitter, the actual maintenance doesn't take that much time at all. You can spread social media marketing efforts among the staff, or you can task a single person to handle it. Either way, social media marketing doesn't require countless work hours. Create a timeline showing the typical amount of time one will spend on social media every week to help prove this point.

7. Make your case. Prepare a short, punchy presentation that hits on all the above topics. Give your boss or colleagues plenty of time to ask questions. Think about your boss or colleagues' personal preferences and consider how you can best sell your Web 2.0 marketing idea. And remember that there may be some things you don't know. Social online marketing is still relatively new, and that means that there are still many unanswered questions out there. Be honest about what you don't know, but make sure to point out all possible benefits to Web 2.0 marketing.

Social network marketing is an exciting new medium that companies can use to achieve just about any business goal. By convincing your colleagues or your boss of the effectiveness of this type of online marketing, you'll be on your way to discovering the enthralling, challenging and rewarding new world of online business networking.

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