We are asked a lot about the best tools to use when sharing website content Socially. So we have put together a list of some of the Social Networking tools that you can use to help you easily share your content with the world. These tools can be integrated with your website, so you can add content to one place and have it shared by all of the social networks with no further action required on your part. This is a good thing and will help your business gain a lot more exposure. These social networking tools are not an all inclusive list by any means, but are just a few good ones to started with. There are hundreds, if not thousands of places to create social profiles online, but these are the ones that will be good to get started with if you are new to doing business online. You can then get started interacting with people looking for your products or services around the world. Again, no favorites for us, just listing the services we know are commonly used and are ones that are frequently used to get started with Social Networking mainly due to the fact that they are free to use.
RSS Feed Distribution
FeedBurner – http://www.feedburner.com
Using Feedburner is a great way to distribute your content to the world, easily. If you have an RSS enabled website (you better by now), then you can easily use your RSS feed to setup your Feedburner account. Feedburner then helps to notify the world via RSS when your website has new content. Your Feedburner feed can be accessed globally by RSS readers, through email delivered by the Feedburner service, and through content channels that publish your feed to websites around the world, like Google News. RSS is the standard used for sharing content online and using the Feedburner service lets Google distribute your content for you. All you have to do is get it setup, then once you add new content to your website, Google tells the world about it!
Social Networks
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
Everyone seems to be using Twitter. It is certainly a very popular service and a place to get your voice heard. Real time conversion is happening right now and you can get involved. Communicate with just about anyone you can think of and follow their latest “Tweets” so you can see what they are thinking and what they are doing. Businesses can use Twitter to communicate with people about their goods and services and keep followers updated about new products, news, contests, and more.
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com
If you have a Facebook account, this can be integrated into your website to allow new content from your website to be automatically added to Facebook each time you update your website. This will then start to allow you to generate a buzz around your topic and gain interested followers that will watch your Facebook account for new details posted from your website. You can also integrate with Facebook Pages – Facebook Fan Pages.
MySpace – http://www.myspace.com
Although not as popular as it once was, this is another place to get a profile that you can then link to and share content with your RSS enabled website. This network has a lot of users and can generate a lot of exposure as well.
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com
This is a business oriented Social Network that is becoming quite popular.
Plaxo – http://www.plaxo.com
Another business oriented Social Network that will help you gain exposure for your business.
Video Sharing
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com
If you plan to use video on your website, this is the way to get started. This is the largest and most popular of the video sharing websites and if you don’t need a lot of control over who sees your video and you want everyone to see it, then this is the tool to use. Once you add video to the Youtube website, your video is distributed globally in minutes. Your video will be added to Youtube and to hundreds of other sources that use Youtube to provide video content. You can gain a lot of exposure using video.
Vimeo – http://www.vimeo.com
A video sharing service geared more towards artists. They have a very popular service and it is growing quickly. Their terms state no commercial use, however there are thousands of people using it that way and they don’t seem to be policing it to much from what we have learned.
Viddler – http://www.viddler.com
Another great place to share videos socially. Community style video sharing website that you can use to distribute your videos.
Photo Sharing
Flickr – http://www.flickr.com
Using Flickr will allow you to manage your photos albums easily and add them to your website. You can gain a lot of exposure for your photos to a global audience with Flickr automatically distributing your photos once you upload them.
Picasa – http://picasaweb.google.com
Picasa is Google’s photo sharing tool that will allow you to share your photos online with Google users and anyone you’d like. You can also integrate this with your website, so your photos from Picasa are shared on your website.
Keyword Search & Visitor Stats
Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html
A good place to get started is with the Google Analytics tool. This will allow you to gain some valuable insight on your website traffic sources, popular keywords, etc. You can also track conversions from initial keyword searches done in any search engine right to the sale of your product, if you have your shopping cart setup to use the Analytics conversion traffic code. This way you can see how much it costs to gain a new customer, what keywords convert the best and what your ROI is on a particular advertising campaign. There are a lot of programs for tracking and monitoring your website traffic, but Google Analytics is a great place to get started and the service is free.
Once you get these profiles created, if you have an RSS enabled website and the right tools to do it, you can easily have your website posting your new content to all of these social networking sites as well as hundreds of others. This will generate a “social buzz” around your products, services, articles, videos, photos or any other content you’d like to share with the world as the new content is added to your website. You can then use this buzz to communicate closely with people interested in your products and services and expand your online reach gaining “followers” or “subscribers” that watch your social profiles anxiously awaiting your next post!
If you are working with us and we are developing your new website, just provide the account access for your Social Networking profiles once you have created them and we will closely integrate these profiles into your website so your new website content additions are automatically shared with your social network profiles, followers and subscribers.
We hope this helps you get started with your Social Networking profiles.