Until YouTube came along, there was no social networking site that promoted user content in the form of video. This niche has catapulted YouTube to the forefront as a leading social networking site. Because of its ease of use and popularity, YouTube has become a launch pad for many business viral marketing campaigns as well.

Do you have a digital camcorder or webcam? If so, you can make a video that can be shared online. People like to see what others are doing. There is no better way to allow others to do just that, than through video media. YouTube is the largest generator of user video content on the web.

Yes, YouTube is another hot spot for kids on the Internet. They can create their own videos to upload or watch videos generated by their friends. Comments can be left on videos either praising or denouncing what they have seen. This feedback can be extremely useful for future video productions and marketing campaigns.

The best thing of all is that it is free to become a YouTube member. Once a member, it only takes a good video camera to create quality film capture for the public. The best videos are those from a wide angle for lots of movement like sports videos or still shots where someone performs a demonstration from a single spot. The more interesting you can make the video, the more hits it will get on the Internet.

Businesses have found a way to use YouTube to increase their bottom line as well. Videos are a great to head up a viral marketing campaign. What is viral marketing you might be asking? We do it all the time and many don’t even realize it.

When someone shares a good review of a product with us and we go out and buy it, that’s viral marketing. Essentially, it is word of mouth advertising. It also works on the negative. Poor reviews lead to lower sales of certain products. On the Internet, negative statements spread like wildfire.

With YouTube, the negative to a viral marketing video campaign is not being seen by anyone. Creating interesting footage of your business products and links pointing back to your website can drive traffic your way. Many YouTube business users have special landing pages on their websites just for people who discover them on YouTube.

Another way that many people create a viral marketing campaign via YouTube is to create their video, upload it to YouTube and at the end of the production, send visitors to their website to pick up a free report, product sample, or the ability to sign up for more information about their business.

Think about some of the ads that you see on television. How many times have you gotten to the end of the commercial and wondered what it was even about? A viral marketing video will talk about your business but present the material in an eye-catching way. Remember the Crazy Glue guy hanging from a beam by his hard hat? You might want to hang from the side of your garage instead of fifty stories in the air but you get the idea.

YouTube provides opportunities for businesses to market their business in a viral fashion. With high quality video and a bit of social networking around the site, traffic and sales will benefit. If you haven’t begun advertising your business via video, YouTube is the perfect place to start. It doesn’t cost a dime to put your business in front of millions, but can produce a return that maybe even you could never have imagined.

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One of the newest social networking sites is Twitter. It sounds like a movement birds make. In fact it is a quick way to send messages to your favorite people via the Internet. Due to its popularity with people all over the world, many entrepreneurs wonder if Twitter can actually help them grow their business.

In order to answer that question we first need to find out what exactly Twitter is? It is a social networking site which allows people to keep in touch with friends, family, and others. Through a series of short posts, important information is sent to a person’s followers. Those short posts are called “tweets.”

Twitter has been used by people to send messages to their friends. The posts can be 140 characters long at most, which allows for quick, precise exchanges of information. If you wanted to let your family know that the reunion this year is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and they needed to volunteer to do something, it would be easy to send them all a tweet at one time. When someone logs into their Twitter account or views your Twitter profile page, they would then see the message. They can then respond to you by posting a tweet of their own.

Twitter is real time communication for people who need to contact others right away. Some wondered if Twitter was just a fancy way of texting someone on the computer. Send a tweet to your husband to say dinner is moved to 7:30. Tell a girlfriend you’ve just bought that blouse you saw last week. If you only want to allow certain people to see the messages you are sending, you can easily mark your profile and updates as private.

Although many use Twitter as a more personal way to communicate, even more treat it as a virtual water cooler to connect with all types of people the world over. It seems as if tweeting would get boring after a while. Not so. With talkative friends you could be tweeted to death in a matter of days. Many actually find themselves losing precious time in their day chit-chatting with those with similar interests.

For the skeptical folks who want to know if tweeting will eventually tank, businesses have found a use for the social network that can increase their utilization and visibility on the Internet. First, let’s say that you have an office of fifty employees. Sending a memo every time there is a big announcement creates a lot of paper to file or leave for the trash man.

Businesses can now use protected Twitter messages to keep employees updated on departmental changes as well as company wide agendas. Employees can subscribe to the company feed set up on Twitter. Whenever there is something important posted, they will be notified.

The same goes for small one-owner and Internet businesses and their customers. Customers can subscribe to the company feed to learn about new products and other useful information. New businesses can create interesting tweets that produce interest and can be re-posted by others to help get the business or owner noticed.

Twitter fills a niche in the social networking sector and is here to stay. Businesses have found a way to make Twitter work to their advantage, whether they are work at home moms longing for adult interaction or reaching out to a broader audience to increase profit. 

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Along with social networking sites, there are now a number of social bookmarking sites on the Internet. While social networking sites build upon relationships between members social bookmarking sites create connections through the types of content generated by members. It is these connections that make social bookmarking such an effective business tool for Internet entrepreneurs especially.

Maybe you have read a blog post or article on someone’s website. At the end of the article or blog post, you’ll see a host of different little pictures or characters. Run your cursor over them and names like Technorati, Digg, Furl, and Delicious pop up. What are these characters and what do the names mean?

These are links to social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking is much like what you would do with an actual bookmark. Physical bookmarks are used to mark a page or a passage that you want to find again at some point. This goes for social bookmarking icons as well. If someone wants to find that particular article again or let others know about it, they can bookmark the address on a site and mark it with keywords for future reference.

Not all social bookmarking sites are the same. The principle is the same across the board, but some social bookmarking sites specialize in different media. Squidoo specializes in creating lenses that showcase an area of expertise of the lens owner. Flickr concentrates on photos. Some bookmarking sites deal with movie or music reviews in contrast.

Before choosing a bookmarking site, find one that caters to the content or type of business that you conduct. That will draw the most traffic to your business. If there is more than one, then join all that apply. One thing to remember is to create content that people will be interested in and use to track back to your business website. Remember that your site readers will mark your pages and posts on these sites because they find them informative and useful and think others will too.

Through quality content, a business owner can easily create a nice following of readers and possibly higher search engine rankings with the use of social bookmarking sites. For the purpose of content, look around the more popular bookmarking sites and see what others are viewing and find interesting and useful. That is the type of content you want to focus on with your websites. Investigating the more popular social bookmarking sites will make it easy to track down competitors and find out what your target market deems as useful information. Using these bookmarking sites will increase the visibility of your content and make it easier to market to your specific target customer or reader.

Social bookmarking is a simple, but effective way to bring traffic to a business website. Add bookmarking icons to your blog or website to help increase the chances of someone adding it to their favorite list of content.

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MySpace first came to the attention of many parents because their kids were using it. But, MySpace is not only for kids but also for the innovative business owner looking to create a following on the Internet. You can easily find friends on MySpace, but also build a compelling profile that attracts business associates.

Like many of these types of social networking sites and their earlier forms of chatting and instant messaging, parents have become concerned about MySpace. They didn’t know much about it but what they did know they didn’t like. Kids were sharing personal information to meet new friends but many of the “friends” that were finding them were up to unsavory things. Pedophiles were finding our kids instead of age appropriate friends.

MySpace was a fun place to post pictures and talk to others but the lack of strong security became a major concern. Parents discussed with their kids the fact that all people on the Internet who posed as young kids were not young kids. Both users and parents became savvy when it came to discerning contacts with honorable and dishonest intentions.

Still, MySpace grew and changed to meet the demands of the public. For those using this site, they could create profiles, upload pictures, and add multimedia content like music and videos for their friends to see. It is these features that attract new members to MySpace, particularly small and large business owners.

For the business owner, MySpace represented an untapped market of people who were potential customers. They could link their profile to their websites and join groups with similar business and personal interests to draw in new business. MySpace was not just a twenty-something hot spot, but a business hub as well.

Networking on MySpace begins with a membership. Joining the social networking site is free. Once you sign up, it’s time to create a profile. Profiles are essentially about you. It is a place where you can tout all of your good qualities as well as your business.

But, that is not the end. To network, you have to meet people. The only way to do that is through getting involved in chats, leave messages for others, upload media for friends to see, and join social groups. If kids can do it, certainly adults and business owners can do it too.

Invite friends, family members, and business associates to join your contact list and visit your profile page. They don’t have to sit on the computer every day to check out your MySpace page. If they have access to Internet on their cell phones, they can check in with you from there too. Whenever people have time to check in on your page, they can do so and see any new updates you’ve made.

Networking on MySpace has its good and bad points. As parents, we are responsible to monitor our kids and their MySpace profiles. For business owners, MySpace presents another avenue for building a wider customer base and sharing information and resources with likeminded individuals.

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We hear about people creating Facebook pages and that someone found someone else on Facebook. But what exactly is Facebook all about and does it have any benefits for us? Read on to find out about Facebook and if it indeed does something more than enhance your social life.

Facebook is one of the top ten Web 2.0 applications and social networking sites in the world. Started as a social experiment, Facebook was originally designed as a way for friends to keep in touch and create interesting profiles and pages for others to look at.

Many kids and college students latched on to Facebook. Members can upload pictures, leave messages on the profiles of others, and search for friends who have profiles. The problem with Facebook was the type of information people were uploading. College students uploading inappropriate videos at wild parties and such have caught on virally. This spoke to the poor judgment of the students as those videos would still be around when they grew out of the drinking phase and realized that it was no longer the “cool” thing to do.

Facebook is not just for the young teenagers and college students however. It is also a networking tool for business owners. It’s a great way to connect with other business owners and targeted potential customers. A plus for new businesses is that becoming a Facebook member is free. Every registered member gets a home page where they can then create a profile and add applications to their page for friends and other trusted users they designate to use.

Entrepreneurs can use their Facebook profile to tell others all about themselves. Many times, businesses never really have a chance for potential clients to learn more about the person or people who run the business. More focus is put on advertising, growing the business and promoting its products or services. With a social networking page on social sites like Facebook, customers and other business associates get a chance to find out about the person behind the business.

Anyone can join or create a group on Facebook. These groups bring together like minded people according to business, personal, or other social factors. Groups talk to one another; share business tips and create a useful connection in many different ways.

Businesses use Facebook pages to showcase products or give customers a place to ask questions and record comments about the products they have used. They can talk to each other and compare notes. Big businesses with famous brand names use Facebook to gain insights into consumer trends.

Facebook can be useful for communities trying to create a closer knit group of families. Homeschooling parents can create a network of support for each other and their kids. Facebook has a variety of uses both for business and personal reasons. So, now that you know more concerning Facebook, what will your page be about?

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Once you know the formula to success, it’s time to consider different avenues in which that formula should be put in to action.  The main one you’ll find in every area of your life is relationships. 

Why relationships?  Because we are human beings, designed to interact with other human beings.  This, by default, entails relationships.  And also by default, if you don’t have appropriate skills to manage your relationships, you will fail miserably at whatever success you’re aiming for. 

The first relationship you must consider is the one you have with yourself.  If you don’t like yourself, chances are great you will project that dislike to others and your lack of self-appreciation will not propel you to success in any given field.  The higher your integrity is, the more you will like yourself.  The more you like yourself, the better your relationships will be with others—from the inside out. 

Your family relationship is the next thing to examine.  The most successful Harvard Business graduates (class of 1949, by percentages) had several things in common: 

• They  had wives who supported their work and endeavors; women who were intelligent and able to share ideas and be a sounding board

• They built their personal, family, and business lives on a foundation of integrity
  

Family relationships are extremely important as you consider your path to success.  If you fail here, you will not succeed elsewhere—we’ve already covered that in depth. 

Business relationships follow closely behind family relationships.  They play a major role in the security and productivity of every individual involved in them, as well as the success and growth of the company.

You must also learn to manage your frustration as you deal with relationships.  Because we are all human, we all have problem-areas and “sticking points” that will irritate and inflame others.  If you can manage your frustration and turn a bad situation with an individual in to something you can learn from and make profitable, you will be that much farther ahead on your road to success.

Consider also, that the next person you meet is important.  He or she might look like someone who cannot help you in your field, but then again, looks are deceiving.  You never know when the person you assist might be able to assist you or report back to your boss what a great job you’re doing! 

Summing up this section, you should be able to see how healthy family relationships, a willingness to go above & beyond at work, and an ability to consider the next person as important can have a monumental effect on your path to success.  We cannot do it alone, and that mere fact means we must deal appropriately with people and relationships!

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Social networking is no longer a buzz word, but an Internet phenomenon. It represents a way for people to interact without traveling half way around the globe or even leaving their home’s comfort. Read on to find out exactly what social networking is and its potential to enhance your life.

Think of it like this. We all have at least one friend. To keep in touch with that friend we call, write, and meet face to face. Through our jobs we meet other friends. The more interactions we have with people, the more chances we have of meeting more folks.

Social networking sites provide the platform for getting to know more “friends.” It is like our job or school or church. They supply the venue and we mingle to find people who have similar interests. Someone had the bright idea to package this not unfamiliar social concept into a cyberspace platform. Now, people can meet others they already know but have lost contact with and new people.

Social networking took off among the younger generation first. They found a way to talk to their friends when they weren’t within sight of each other. For guys, it meant meeting girls in a non-threatening social situation. For girls, the feeling was mutual.

But, social networking is not just for the teeny boppers. Adults enjoy social networking as well. The first social networking sites we all heard about were Facebook and MySpace. This was mostly due to controversy surrounding what some Generation X kids were posting, but it made parents aware of the social networking craze.

Adults use social networking for a number of reasons. First, it is personal. We reconnect with busy friends and family. If you can’t reach Aunt Charlotte because she’s always off around the world on one adventure or another, post new pictures of the kids on your MySpace page. She can view them when she comes down from Mount Everest.

Social networking gurus discovered that while finding old friends, business owners could form valuable alliances through their associations on social networking websites. Now, social networking has become valuable to anyone wanting to develop a website presence for their business. Social networking for business is akin to going door to door and telling people about your product. Create a compelling business profile and draw in the people you know by joining social groups with similar interests.

Social networking has a place in the life of both young and old alike. Use it to meet new people, make business contacts, stay in touch with family, or just to beef up your Internet presence. The wave of the future is social networking. Don’t you want to join?

How Web 2.0 and Social Networking Go Hand in Hand

It sounds like a new type of software for the computer. Web 2.0 has become the buzz word of the moment. Even as popular as the term, there are many people who want to know exactly what Web 2.0 really is. If you’re one of them, read on to find out.

The phrase was coined by a man named Tim O’Reilly at a conference. It seemed to take off and morph into a new idea for the advancement of social networking sites on the Internet. So, Web 2.0 is actually a type of platform that supports and brings more to these social networking sites.

The idea of social networking begins with the individual model. Individuals meet other individuals and form connections. This concept would be physically demonstrated by balls and sticks like the blocks we used to play with as kids. Without the sticks to connect the balls, they wouldn’t have a connection.

Web 2.0 provides the base where these interactions occur. It also defines the way in which the interactions can occur. Individuals create profiles that can stand alone and meet new people through those profiles. Other features of the platform like news feeds, multimedia content, blogs, instant messages, social groups, audio and video, and message boards are also a huge part of Web 2.0. In this way, the connection of one individual grows and develops into an entire network of others.

There are several social networking sites that use Web 2.0 as their basis. Including some you may have heard of:

·         Facebook

·         YouTube

·         Twitter

·         LinkedIn

·         Wikipedia

·         MySpace

·         WordPress

·         Blogger

·         Flickr

There are many more, but you get the idea from the partial list. If you belong to any of these social networking sites, you have sampled a Web 2.0 platform. Each site utilizes user-generated content that is ranked by the search engines. Good content is found and the content producer gains a following that can be used to gain popularity on the web or increased visibility for a business.

Web 2.0 platforms are used by businesses, universities, and families. It is a way to keep in touch with easy to use and manageable applications. One useful application is the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed which automatically updates subscribers when changes occur to your page. This is specific application is frequently used on blogs and news sites to save readers time. They no longer have to check their favorite websites daily for updates. Instead they receive a notice via email or in their feed reader when something new has been posted.

Companies can use Web 2.0 technology through Google Groups and Yahoo Groups. Employees can sign up and become a part of groups to receive important information about company projects or social agendas. Anyone can form a group on Google or Yahoo for business or social reasons.

Web 2.0 provides several tools for the business user and the purely personal social networker. Driving traffic to a blog, website, or other piece of information has never been more convenient than with the rise of Web 2.0 and social networking sites.

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Why does it always come back to the ageless truths?  Mostly because that which is truth is ageless and truth doesn’t change with the wind.  “The Right Philosophy” can be defined by any number of phrases, but it always comes back to the “golden rule.”  It’s re-phrased, but the essence is the same:

You can have whatever you want in life if you will just help others get what it is that they want.

This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky-feel-good theory, this is practical and will be strongly linked to your success, no matter what field you’re in.  It shows that all aspects of success—business, personal, etc.—are linked together and will all have an impact on your financial success.

Everyone largely wants the same things in life; to be happy, healthy, to have at least some amount of prosperity, to be secure and have friends, to have a happy family life, to have peace, and to have hope.

Abraham Maslow called it the Hierarchy of Needs:  our physiological needs are met, then we move on to the need for safety, then to the need for love, then on to the need for esteem, and finally what he called “self-actualization.”  Fancy words to say that we all need the same things (the basic needs met) before we can achieve success, however it is that we define success.

No matter what your religious beliefs are, the golden rule is inherent in each religion; each just uses different words.  The philosophy that you need to care for others (the “do unto others”) as you want to be cared for yourself (“as you would have others do unto you”) is at the heart of my phrase above—you will find success when you consider the needs of others as not only achievable, but something with which you can help.

When you do this, you not only set yourself to be assisted as you face needs in the future, but you also show others (and yourself!) that your own ambition hasn’t blinded you.

Remember:  success doesn’t happen in the vacuum of work only.  It’s something that touches every aspect of your life and the right philosophy will help get you there!

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Develop these 5 attributes of a successful person, and you will find yourself moving quickly toward your goals in life!

•    Thick Skin:  you cannot be easily offended or hurt if you want to be successful.  There will always be people who are jealous or envious or out to bring someone else down—you must develop a way to see past that and let it roll off your back, like “water off a duck’s back.”

Ducks have feathers that are tight and their density act like oil—it keeps the duck dry and warm.  So when water (cold or otherwise) lands on the back of a duck, it simply rolls off.  Let criticism roll off your back in a similar manner—because if you are going to be successful, you will have your share of criticism.  Count on it.

•    Obedience:  although this might seem strange to talk about to adults and not children, it is important to consider that in order to be a leader, you must first learn how to obey a leader.  You must learn the principle of loyalty to a leader if you want to lead others.

Once you have learned how to obey and to follow directions, you can lead others and understand what commands and orders do for an organization and an individual.  Consider this:  175 of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are former US Marines, and 27 US Presidents served in the military.

•    Courage:  bravery is not courage, but you cannot have courage without being brave.  Courage is the moral fortitude to stand up for your character (touched on in the last article) and to do the right thing—even in the face of adversity.

When you have courage, you follow through on your vision.  It’s on display every day and only the courageous have the ability to get the most out of life.  When you have the strength of your conviction, find the courage to put it in to action.  You won’t be sorry you did.

•    Intolerance:  not exactly what you might expect to find in an article about success, but each of us must be intolerant of any number of things:  intolerant of abuse, of injustice, of the things that you know are immoral, unethical, or illegal.  If there’s anything in this world you should be intolerant of, those are some of them.  I hope you are an intolerant person—in the right way.

•    Sense of Humor:  if you don’t have a sense of humor, you will fall flat on your face and never be someone who succeeds.  A good portion of the road we walk to success is filled with blockades and potholes.  If you come up against one and go down, you must have the ability to laugh at the situation and yourself.  If you don’t, you will be angry and bitter about your misfortune and never move past it.  Laugh at yourself and what you run up against and you’ll find your climb to the top is quicker and more enjoyable than you thought it would be.

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Somewhere along the line you may have learned that people have various styles of learning.  When you as a business person are able to appeal to more than one method of learning you not only make it easier for your clients to benefit from your products, you also demonstrate a desire to communicate effectively with your audience.  So how do people learn?

Visually.
Kinesthetic
Auditory.

Visually is easy to understand.  These people generally learn by seeing things or reading them.  They learn by reading or watching a tutorial.  Diagrams and maps generally make sense to these people and they often respond in conversation with “I see” or “Do you see?”  When they describe things they describe how they look.

Kinesthetic learners learn by immersing themselves into a system.  They’re hands on people.  These types of learners are generally able to take something apart and put it back together easily.  If they’re learning a dance step they learn by walking through it.  If they learn how to design a website, they learn by doing it.  They’re hands on and will often describe things by feel or by process.

Auditor learners learn by hearing.  These people generally retain things they’ve heard much better than things they’ve read or seen.  These people will often say, “I hear what you’re saying.”

Now these are broad generalizations and many people learn in a combination of styles and when people are able to combine styles, say they can read a book and hear the book via audio then they are significantly more likely to retain the information.  Or if they can participate in an online seminar and then have a recording of that seminar then they’ll retain that information much easier.

When you add an audio recording as a part of your product offerings you’re helping your customers retain the benefits of your information products and you’re demonstrating to them that you’re passionate about meeting their needs.  In addition, audio recordings can be shared very easily and thus your awareness may grow simply from adding an audio version of your information product.  Audio recordings really are a great technology!

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