Hammer Internet Consulting 800-528-1214

Long lasting first page results get you noticed.
Engaging on-page content wins sales.
The net buzzing about your business builds credibility.

And all those roads to success start here.

What is Social Networking?

It used to be that the only reliable way to find information online was to use a search engine.

However, with the advent of Web 2.0 (interactive, dynamic websites that promote or operate as social networks), people can now easily find information and websites that other human beings recommend.

The most recent instance of this is social bookmarking. Websites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and Furl allow users to share their personal favorites (bookmarks) with others. Users tag each bookmarked website with the keywords they feel are most applicable.

Now, instead of using a search engine to find information, people can search tags that will display all websites bookmarked with that specific tag. This amounts to a human referral or vote for the site and its relevance to the subject being searched.

Other versions of social networking include blogging social networks – primarily Technorati.com. Technorati indexes blogs based on the amount of incoming links those blogs have, as well as the tags associated with their posts.

Some of the most popular social networks today are Facebook, Twitter, and the once king, MySpace. Millions and millions of visitors frequent these sites daily, and purchase goods and services they perceive as high value items.

Lastly, two powerful new social media networks have emerged that are revolutionizing audio and video: YouTube and BlogTalkRadio. These mega networks allow citizen filmmakers and broadcasters to share their visions with the world and spread the word about what matters to them. They have become so popular that YouTube is now second only to Google in searches, and climbing.

These media networks are potential goldmines stock full of future Speilbergs, Bloombergs, and Oprahs - all potential broadcasters of your marketing message.

How Will Social Networking Help My Site Traffic Grow?

Establishing a company presence on the social networks is no longer a novel idea, it is a necessity. Viral advertising (think ultra word of mouth)is the currency of social sites, whether the advertisement is for a commercial or non-commercial item (goofy home videos, etc.)

What this means for the small to medium business is that they can now compete with giants without spending millions of advertising dollars. One good campaign can make you a household name, securing your brand and subsequent revenue for many years to come.

So if your company is not present on any of the major social networks, you're missing out on the easiest, fastest way to access the vast majority of internet users.

How Do I Get Involved in Social Networking?

Working with social sites is similar to working with the media. Give them a good enough story, secret, tip, bargain, video, or resource that they can sink their teeth into and you’ll have an army of talkers spreading the word about you and your business. Viral marketing really does spread faster than the flu...

This "buzz" translates into referrals, which convert into sales on an average of 667% better than cold leads (search engine results). So even if you reach fewer people through social networking, your conversions will be far higher.

We target various social networks through a variety of methods:

Article or Blog Promotion

A well managed blog (as well as article pages) that contain posts written purely to capture the imagination and interest of our client’s target market is the ultimate way to pinpoint your demographic. Instead of broadcasting, it is more like narrow casting or even laser casting.

For instance, if you sell ferret beds, gifts, and items, we will develop a series of blog posts or articles that discuss a controversial or “hot off the press” topic that ferret lovers either find highly valuable as an information resource, or highly intriguing or emotionally stimulating. We will then promote it to various social bookmarking and blogging networks, as well as popular bloggers – who will then circulate the story and generate traffic back to your website.

Social Promotion

This used to be primarily effective if you target teens, young adults, musicians, or other highly active social groups, but now all ages use these resources. We implement social promotion campaigns on networks like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, and CraigsList to spread the word about your business. Even if your business does not target the “MySpace crowd”, (i.e. teens and young adults) we can almost always devise a creative campaign to get the net buzzing.

How Does Social Networking Work With SEO?

As more and more internet users begin to use tags to find information (a tag is a keyword that a human associated with a website, vs. a keyword that a search engine attributes to a website), Search Marketing professionals cannot ignore the growing dominance of the social networks.

However, we view the partnership between social networks and search engines as an excellent and balanced marriage. Social networking gets you in front of people who use search engines less in lieu of finding their information through referrals or bookmarks/tags. But the added, and perhaps more exciting bonus, is that while you grow in popularity with social networks like Facebook and YouTube, your search rankings will continue to increase as a result!

Your popularity signals Google that you are an authority in your market according to your human audience.