Social Media Tools and Most Popular Networking Sites

Top social networking sites

Market Research Tools

Any company in any industry can't afford not to listen to what others are talking about them. You can get updates on who talking about you, your industry, your customers (e.g., use Google Alerts);find out what’s happening in all the topics that interest you (in Alltop, Backtype,LinkedIn Answers, Yahoo! Answers), get your products reviews and feedback(Crowdstorm, GetSatisfaction). Also, read blogs that talk about your company and see what people are saying. Blog search engines (Google Blog Search, Technorati) can help you determine which blogs are the most influential in your industry. GoogleReader enables you to organise RSS feeds. There are companies that monitor social media, such as Nielsen BuzzMetrcis, and you can use their services to be updated about what are people writing about your company and competitors. Flickr), original writing, (Scribd), PowerPoint presentations(Slideshare), videos and music (YouTube, My Space). There are also opportunities for livecast hosting (Justin.tv, BlogTV, UStream, Qik, Flixwagon, Kyte, LiveCastr),and there are many publication tools, such as Wikipedia, Wikia, Wetpaint and citizen journalism portals (Digg, Newsvine).

Social networking Sites

There is a social network for every audience and business.Currently, Facebook is leading with more than 350 million members. LinkedIn targets working professionals and Piczo is popular with young girls. Bebo and Hi5 dominate in Europe while Brazilians join Orkut. Members of these sites maintain their profiles, and connect and interact with each other. Social networking sites are also platforms for mini-applications. There are numerous social aggregation tools, like FriendFeed, Socializr, lifestrea.ms, Profilactic. Businesses can create their own networks (Ning) and organize business contacts via the web (Plaxo). Marketers can use discussion tools for communicating with their audience. These are:forums (PHPbb, vBulletin, Phorum), video forums (Seesmic), instant messaging (Yahoo!Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Meebo), VoIP (Skype, Google Talk) and etc.

Blogging

Depending on your business, starting a blog could be a low-cost method of boosting your profile with your audience. You should really see your blog as a way of making people aware of your products and services and sharing knowledge rather than as a source of direct sales. Tools for crating and monitoring blogs are, for example, WordPress, TypePad, Joomla, Technorati, IceRocket, and Google Blog Search.

Microblogging

A microblog is a site that combines the publishing power of blogging with some social networking features like “friends” or “followers’, such as Twitter, Pownce,Jaiku, Plurk, and Adocu. Twitter and Jaiku limit posts to 140 characters or less and let people send and receive posts through text messaging. For example, non for-profit organizations are using microblogs to draw attention to articles online that are specifically about the issues they cover such as the World Wildlife Foundation using Twitter to reference current news about endangered animals.

Virtual Worlds

In virtual worlds, inhabitants can roam around and interact with others, lead a different life and even conduct businesses inside it. For example, Second Life uses high end graphics to create a virtual world in which its users are represented using Avatars, and they trade using the virtual money Linden Dollars. There are other virtual world tools (e.g., Entropia Universe, Stardoll, and Club Penguin) and 3Dchats, like Habbo and IMVU. There has been news about companies setting up shop inside Second Life, mostly the apparel manufacturers to sell designer clothes and even IBM who set up a customer support desk. Also, many companies are experimentingin virtual worlds. For example, Skittles is advertising in WeeWorld, and people can test-drive a Pontiac in Second Life.

Gaming

There are many social gaming platforms (e.g., ImInLikeWithYou, Doof) and causal gaming portals (Pogo, Cafe, Kongregate). Thousands of game applications tailored to Facebook, MySpace, hi5 and other sites have been created by techies around the world. The most popular of these games, such as FarmVille, Happy Aquarium and Mobsters have grown through what Web business mavens call a viral appeal, encouraging players to invite friends into the games.

Social Media Tools for Measurement

Measuring social media marketing efforts is not straight forward and includes much more that mere web analytics and site demographics. The more advanced measurements are ‘online community’ analytics that actually track the healthy, influence, and sentiment of a community. But, as a start point, the following tools may be used to:

• Provide good overview of analytics and site demographics (Quantcast, Google Analytics, Alexa);

• Track the performance of your and competitors’ keywords (Hubspot);

• Grade your website on a number of analytics and social media indicators (Website Grader) and

• Compare tool for web analytics-type information (Compete.com).