Why Care about Social Media? What are the benefits of getting involved in the social networking?

• Links – it allows you to build inbound links to your website that increases your ranking in search engines. Social news sites can be used to generating good reasons for people to discuss your business, brand or your product thus producing hundreds or thousands of inbound links and references to your site.

• Mindshare & Branding – it allows you to create brand awareness

• Customer Interaction – for the purpose of improving your products or services, establishing trust, being seen as an authority in your space and creating followers.

Online social networks are webs of relationships that grow from computer-mediated discussions. The webs grow from conversations among people who share a common affinity. Social networks grow from the personal interactions of people over time, as well as from the technological infrastructure that connects those people. This means that growing a successful online social network requires social know-how as well as technical expertise.

The explosive multiplication of an individual's ability to find answers to questions is one of the most powerful benefits of an online social network. Search engines find facts. People provide solutions to problems. Networks of people can solve problems for each other. Online networks accelerate and globalise the process.

How to increase awareness

Your Audience are the visitors you are trying to reach, to whom you are trying to deliver your message, and with whom you are most likely trying to establish an ongoing relationship. They are made up of groups of individuals with certain characteristics, needs, and desires in common.

It is important to remember the different members of your audience—members of different ethnic and cultural groups, union members, and women. Sometimes responding to these segments is a matter of content. Certainly this group will look carefully at the issues area. Sometimes it is a matter of targeted communication. You have a single target audience or multiple target audiences. Often you will have primary and secondary targets.

Your audience will visit your site looking for information they want to find or a product they are interested in. If they don’t find it, or if you don’t otherwise engage them, they’ll leave.
An optimised site will have more traffic generating more interest and potentially more profit. A site that is cross-browser compatible will carry the same message and branding to everyone who looks at it, without unpleasant and unexpected behaviour. Usability, Standards and Content Optimisation are, at the end of the day, also audience considerations.

If you know who your target audience is, you can tailor your site’s look and feel, content, and action areas to appeal to your audience and draw them in. If you know what your site visitors want, you can use that information to mutual benefit. Site visitors will leave having found what they came for, and—if you have done your homework—you will have gotten the response you wanted from them. This may be their contact information. It may be a product purchase.

Linsey Bholah
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