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In the future, all websites
will be social. Even yours.
With the introduction
of Facebook, Google +1 and others mean that what used to
be "just a webpage" is now a powerful hybrid of
static content, live content and social interactions.
We provide the hosting component for your website, the one
aspect you can completely control. Once you have your domain
name and prepared your basic webpage concept, it's time
to ponder how you will tackle the social media aspects of
your site. We're going to provide some examples here for
your benefit, please comment and interact as you go.
Facebook®:
Facebook is called the third
largest country on the planet for good reason. They
claim that over 500M live accounts exist and that's a rather
staggering number. Most people you meet have a facebook
page or at least know what it is but as a business do you
realize what it means to you?
Facebook provides a wealth of Social "plug-ins"
for your website that help users interact with you and with
each other. It's a bit scary at first for some who are used
to the privacy of email and telephone but the benefits can
become rather overwhelming if you do it properly.
Facebook Like:
You can add a small widget to each page on your website
that a user can click to say they "LIKE" it or
they can also "SEND" the link to their contacts.
The magic of this lies in the user's own network of "Friends".
If they "LIKE" your page, their contacts are notified
and it will be displayed as content in their newsfeed. This
can lead to a lot of interest in your page. This can also
give you the chance to have an ongoing conversation with
visitors.
Like So: Click LIKE to see what happens (if you have a facebook account and are logged in on a different TAB on your browser, it'll just post the LIKE automatically. If you aren't logged in, you get prompted to log in.
Comments:
Another valuable tool is called "Comments". This
widget allows people to post comments on your page and other
users can comment on their comments. These comments can
be valuable insight and can be moderated if you wish. More
details on all the fantastic customization can be found
on the Facebook site (your page > Edit > Resources
> Use Social Plug-Ins).
There are other interesting widgets such as:
Recommendations (let users
be guided by other users to products on your site or in
your shopping area), Login
(let people log-into your site using their Facebook profile),
Registration (let people
sign up for your website etc using their Facebook credentials).
Google +1
There is a lot of buzz happening about Google's newest foray
into social networking. You can learn more about their whole
platform at http://plus.google.com. The first simple tool
available is the +1
button for individual pages. Which allows Gmail users
(and Google +1 members) tosay they like your site, page
or service. It looks like this:
We will be adding more to this page as we
go along with the conversion to social integration. We'll
share what we find out about the good and the bad and will
keep adding resources for you to learn about the revolution.
Remember to click our LIKE button at the top.
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