Social networking is taking off both online and off. Sites such as Face book, You Tube, and Twitter are the top five social networking sites. These sites have created new opportunities for individuals, businesses, and services to reach people online which they would have probably never been able to reach. One thing is certain that the people that go on social sites are leaving a finger print of who they are and what they are looking for, this defines their self-identities. Every time you join a social site and connect with other people you are leaving your mark.
Face book gives you the ability to set up a fan page for yourself, business, product or service. With Twitter you have the ability to customize your background personalize the profile and post your link. This draws attention to you and helps to enhance your self-image. Everyone likes to see their name in print! And a picture can tell a thousand words.
Do you have good “netiquette?” Do your children use proper netiquette? Do you think the Internet should be a free for all, do-what-you-want kind of place? Or do you believe in the need for strong ethical guidelines in cyberspace? Is there a Golden Rule of Netiquette?
The Golden Rule of Netiquette: Never say to someone online, something you would never say to their face. Sounds pretty simple. Yet cyberspace rudeness and misbehavior is running rampant, especially with teens. Cyber bullying is no joke. With the popularity of social media sites and the fact that most kids are way ahead of their parents when it comes to technology, many parents may feel inadequate when it comes to instilling online ethics.
Twitter is more of a social marketing tool rather then a social network when used properly and with purpose. We have all gotten the emails with the headlines desperately trying to convince us there are hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made on Twitter, and the best part is it can be done in one week, right? Of course not, but with the correct information leading you, there is plenty of opportunity on Twitter to be used to your advantage.
Automation and Twitter go hand in hand with the right application. There are many features of Twitter that can be utilized with an application to drive targeted traffic to your products, sites, and blogs. The biggest challenge in marketing is traffic to your offers, there is a saying all over the internet you may have heard before, “you can have the most beautiful and well laid out website but if nobody sees it, you make no sales.” Like many areas of online marketing there is strength in numbers, using a Twitter application that helps generate followers is the avenue you can use to gain those multitudes of possibilities. If you think about it, your list of followers is a bit like having an auto-responder list, only its a real time list. Having a good Twitter application is very useful in auto-follow efforts. With a good software you can setup an auto-follow situation based on keywords, usernames, or their own followers. For example, if you were trying to advertise a dog training website you created that had affiliate links, you could set the software to search for tweets using the keywords “dog training.” Same goes for usernames. For own followers this is how you setup the software to follow the followers of others. After you have this setup it is usually best practice to keep track of who you followed but they didn’t follow you back and either send them a special tweet or delete them and move on, but even un-following can be automated if you get your hands on a really good software.


