Social Media Marketing is a must for any business owner, large or small. The numbers are staggering and the people there are in a cheerful and sociable mood. What better time to present your business or service? But there are literally hundreds of social sites out there, so it’s also important to know which social networks you need to target. Trying to bring them all together is a daunting task and keeps you from focusing on your brand. Do you want to know which Social Networks you definitely have to be part of? The top 7 are listed below.
1-Facebook – Hard to believe some nerdy kid from Harvard just started this so all the students could check each other out. Everyone knows Facebook, and more than 125 million users log in at least once a day in the US alone.
2-YouTube – Rising quickly up the charts, now owned by Google (what do you think it will do with its search results?), they offer video and text based interaction.
3-Twitter – A text-only interface, clean, simple… and powerful. All celebrities and sports heroes tweet, and that has made it a popular one-way message delivery service. Employees 140 or fewer characters of text, so brevity is key.
4- LinkedIn – More than a social network for professionals, it boasts members from all the executive staff of Fortune 500 Companies, CEO’s, FFO’s and the like. Get involved here and make just 1 quality connection and it could mean the sky is the limit.
5 – hello5 – One of the fastest growing social networks, has versions in all major languages. A must if you have (or want) a foreign business presence online.
6-Skyrock – The #1 social networking site in France, by far. It started as a blog for a radio station and progressed into a full-fledged social networking site.
7 – Friends – One of the original online social meeting places, it launched in 2002. Its basic format was the inspiration for Facebook and others.
* Honorable Mention – 51.com – China’s number 1 with over 100 million users, has the ability to outperform all others, simply because of the population of China.
Knowing the most popular sites is just the beginning. Just 2 years ago, MySpace was a beast, and now it’s not even considered a top 10 social network (based on traffic). You need to know how to get your message across to the different sites, and that’s where a Social Media Marketing expert can help you.