Internet Business Tips

Social Network has been the top buzz in internet business world. As we know, Web 2.0 has already changed the internet world and it enables common people gain access to the online world and their opinion and comments are highly valued. Social bookmarking, social networking, blogs… are all the ways people use to get connected, exchange ideas and share information.

We use use social networking sites to help us grow our online business. But what site to use? There are several to choose from, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, OpenSocial…. Paul Dunay from BuzzMarketinfortech.com suggested to use solely Facebook. Well, as the No. 7 most visited website, Facebook has almost two million new users from around the world sign up each week, according to Facebook. This number is appealing for any online business.

Paul Dunay in his post ” Get a Facebook Strategy ” even showed how to use Facebook as a means to promote online business.

Use Facebook as a clearinghouse for everything you are doing online for your “community” by filtering content you find on the Web. To do that:

• add the Twitter application – so others can see what you are doing
• add the Del.icio.us application – so others can see what you are tagging
• add StumbleUpon – so others can see what you are finding interesting
• add zuPort for YouTube – so others can see what videos you posted

Start a group on Facebook – either for an area of interest or for your brand

• The Seinfeld group started with just 10 members, but by the very next day it was up to 2000 members!

Paul Dunay recently wrote another post ” Facebook Marketing Success Stories for Businesses” to tell us some success stories for business using Facebook. I would like to quote two examples:

* Bryce Gruber is the 23-year-old owner of IntenCity Global, a five-person marketing and public-relations firm in New York. She says Facebook works well for her and has brought tangible results. She recently drew more than 300 people to an opening party for a clothing store that she expected would only attract 150 to 200. And the people who learned of the party through Facebook bought several thousand dollars in merchandise. Her approach is to post information and reminders about her events regularly, and upload plenty of party pictures afterward. Each day, she gets 20 to 30 messages on her Wall and keeps that going with quick replies. The effort means she shows up often in her Facebook friends’ news feeds, where people are notified of their friend’s activities on Facebook.

* On the company page of Rootsgear’s, which designs T-shirts with political and social messages, people can look at the firm’s designs and see a calendar of upcoming events. The company stokes its group membership of about 1,400 by every few months sending out invitations to join to new Facebook friends collected by cofounder Sunmit Singh. Mr. Singh says the Facebook page drives more traffic to Rootsgear’s e-commerce site than Google’s search engine or MySpace, another social-networking site where it has a presence. And Facebook has helped the year-old company’s sales.

Yes, it seems to be quite promising. Using Facebook or not is not that important, but using a social network site seems to be an effective and cheap way. What we need is creativity and diligence on our side and a little bit luck.

Wish you success in the coming new year!