Posted in Site Grind Resources - Articles
Creating a Social Focus… What is it?
It is the ability to connect others, from personal to professional, and open new social avenues exposing individuals and groups to a wider range of information to achieve their goals.
Creating a social focus enhances your flexibility to network contacts and resources, offers increased interpersonal connections to ensure success, allows for resourceful gathering of information, and bridges groups of people that are not otherwise linked.
In the Business Sense
When you’re looking to connect with business-related contacts, find potential clients or collaborate with other professionals, incorporating a social focus into your website’s design just makes sense.
Face it, we all want to make better use of our time when it comes to targeting and nurturing our online audience. We take great pains to help them find information on our products and services more easily.
From a business perspective, sites that network with others help a company gain a broader picture of its brand and its overall perception and relevance within the communities’ sphere of influence. No matter the size of your business, it is important to communicate with your community of users.
Reach More - Win More
What if you could have a certain group of people, talking about a certain topic, service or product, collectively giving their thoughts and opinions on it? Would that information be valuable to you? Would you be able to respond to their needs more effectively? And, what if having this information improved traffic to your site or increased your bottom line?Would that be worth it to you?
A Personal Choice
Sites that foster a social focus are clearly not limited to the corporate environment. Creating a social focus on a site can allow you bring your team, club, friends, or any group of people together online.
A networked site helps you capture the value and difference of social communities from the standpoint of reaching specific audiences. A website that offers a full range of socially focused options including community management, forum integration, event calendars or twitter feeds could be a major boon to your online efforts!
Blogs, Twitter, Facebook
Is your website meeting the needs of your socially driven customers?In a time of instant digital communication, consumers are reaching out to others with ease from their mobile phones, laptops and home computers. Are you keeping up with them? Using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, you can connect with larger groups, generate more interest and create your own following!
Here is a quick look at some social network options and their potential benefit to your website.
Blogging
Having a blog on your website is a great way to keep visitors interested in your business. Often underestimated, a blog is a powerful tool when properly implemented and maintained.
- Helps spread the word
- Jump starts your social networking
- Increases the public visibility of your company
- Tells your target market what’s happening with your company
Forum Integration
Adding a customized, secure, and user-friendly forum to your site allows visitors to interact with you, post queries and respond to those queries.
Event Calendars
Integrate a Web-based calendar system into your existing site to:
- Avoid conflicting events
- Improve overall event management
- Simplify scheduling and notification
- Increase event awareness and attendance
- Allow users to download important events to personal calendars
- Inform your audience of new events and schedule changes via email
Twitter and Facebook
Applications like Twitter and Facebook provide instant gratification to users "living in the moment" and allows them to express themselves with lightning speed to hundreds if not thousands of other users. Embracing this type of communication on your website let's you:
- Collect valuable feedback
- Monitor the feedback loop
- Actively listen to your audience
- Communicate with your online user
- Find out what customers are saying
- React to online discussions quickly and efficiently
- Build productive, thriving social media communities
There are many other social options, from full-blown community software systems to simple applications that promote commenting or social bookmarking. A little research will uncover the perfect community and social option for your website and business.
