As new online trends begin to change, there is one entity that hasn’t lost any traction along the way – The Social Network. Top social media sites have been around for quite a long time. It has only been recently, due to the growing popularity of a select few, that companies began exploring ways to market themselves and their products through these viral platforms. What makes social media so great, is that in most cases it is completely free to get started creating profiles and getting involved with communities in order to set themselves apart as authorities in their market. We have compiled a list of the top 5 social media sites to get started with that have proven results for personal bloggers and website owners alike.
This is by far the most recognizable platform and probably will be for many years to come. Facebook was originally launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates. The site, which was originally launched as a university profile site, now has over a billion users and is a globally traded company. Creating a profile on Facebook is simple and only requires a couple minutes to do so. What’s next is entirely up to you. For personal use, Facebook presents limitless tools to not only connect with other individuals you know, but also connect with people who have similar profiles to your own. Creating Facebook profiles for business is another huge opportunity to get more traffic to your website or your blog. Many site platforms allow you to integrate your Facebook account into your website or blog, which can enable your visitors to easily “like” your pages or posts, as well as the products that your are marketing.
Twitter got its start as a microblogging site. Through its ease of use and even easier method of connectivity with others, Twitter has become another huge asset to hundreds of thousands of companies wishing to get new product releases and updates out to the world. Twitter serves a multitude of purposes. You have 140 characters per tweet to send out the latest news, trends, chatter, and virtually any message you want to reach to the masses. Twitter has become a great way to quickly share whats going on in your world and update your followers on the progress of your company or website. Of course, Twitter can be used for nothing but a cheaper alternative to text messaging. Again, this social media site is easy to get started with. Simply create your profile with an email address and username. After you are set up, there are a plethora of widgets you can use, not only on your website or blog, but also a number of mobile devices and smart phones.
Think of Linkedin as a “social connection site”. As opposed to Facebook, where you develop a “friends list”, Linkedin allows you to connect with other professionals in your line of work. The site allows you to upload your professional history and area of expertise. You can easily connect with others based on your profile settings and allow others to easily find you based on your current work location or through the connections you have already established. Linkedin is a great way to advertise what you have been up to in the business world and allows you to chat, post, or update your news in the same way that Facebook and Twitter does. Linkedin allows you to link your personal and business websites, as well as it allows you to link your other social media sites to the account.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a really great platform to use if you already have an established site or blog that you are looking advertise for. Not only does it allow you showcase your own pages and posts, but you can like similar sites in your niche that will enable you to develop a great profile of sites under your like page. Once you establish an account, you can go through and like or dislike any pages that are generated based off of certain keywords or phrases you put in your profile. It is basically an equivalent of Google search, without having to do the leg work yourself. As you build a profile or likes, you can establish connections with other individuals who have the same likes or dislikes as your own. You can easily add StumbleUpon widgets onto your own site which will allow others to add your site to their profile without actually having to discover first through StumbleUpon.
Google Plus
Who else could be one of the authority social media sites than the White Whale themselves – Google. Although social media has been around for a long time, Google is still playing a little bit of catch up in this area. However, within the past 2 years, Google Plus has become the go-to social media site for any blogger trying to get a name for themselves. Google uses what are called “circles” to find and add connections with other people. Like Facebook, you can specify what type of relationship you have with each of these circles, and it will allow you to easily connect with others in a similar category. As you establish your profile, you can link to as many sites or blogs that you are a “contributor” to. This will also allow Google to recognize your contributions and may help you search ranking when establishing credibility to your blog.
About Josh Nadeau
Nice post ! Nowadays social media has become an essential part of our daily life. I personally prefer facebook. Twitter & Linkedin are good.
Agreed! It’s pretty amazing to see how essential social media has become for people. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes the preferred method of communication and advertising for companies, if it isn’t on its way there already.
I’m still not sure about Twitter and the likes, although I definitely see advantages to FB, but not sure how all these FB changes are a positive. I am still marketing myself through FB, but not getting the same results.
Hi! This is kind of off topic but I need some advice from an established blog.
Is it tough to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about setting up my own but I’m not sure where to start. Do you have any tips or suggestions? Cheers
The most important thing is finding a niche that you enjoy writing about. There are a lot of other blog posts on this site that give you direction on how to get things setup. If you thinking of starting a blog, I highly recommend using WordPress. There are a ton of tutorials out there to get you started.