12 Effective Social Media Channels for Maximum Social Conversion

There isn’t any low cost promotional technique on the web today, except social media channels, to promote, market and flourish your business by attracting huge traffic. Using all or most of these channels does ensure that readers visiting your website will revisit it over and over again.

It’s extremely significant if you have an online business or simply, presence. Maybe you know a couple of your colleagues who don’t use social media. I will tell you something about them. They fall under any of these 3 categories –

1. Not aware about social media and aren’t interested in it
2. Interested in using these channels but cannot use it due to lack of knowledge
3. Don’t know the significance of usage of social media

There isn’t any fourth category or reason why not to use social media. Huge corporations, individuals, communities, and almost everyone exhibits and enhances their online presence through these tools. So, let’s have a look at some of these.

1. Blogs
   A blog is a website owned and updated regularly by you. You can talk about one or multiple topics, ideas, news, entertainment, or just about anything you wish. Every entry is known as a post. However, unlike websites, it allows commenting. So, it’s a two way communication rather than one.This often works well for companies as it requires some basic familiarity and interest. Generally, people initiate industry specific blogs, like finance, law, etc.
2. Photo Sharing
   As the name suggests, this tool allows you to click, upload, and share images with users. There are many photo sharing services like Flickr, Shutterfly, Photobucket, Google’s Picasa. It’s quite easy to create an account and star uploading your photos. People watching your pics can comment or even reprocess you images, if you provide them with copyright license.
3. Video Sharing
   If you can share images and attract people, videos would be a brilliant allurement. Today, most of the mobile phones and digital cameras can record good-quality videos that can be uploaded on the web.Various video sharing websites like blip.tv or youtube.com are easy to access and open an account with. You can upload a video and receive a unique code or link, which helps you embed it on any sites. It works well when you add a short description about the video, which helps people to decide about viewing or not viewing the clip. And I don’t really think people will argue when I say video explains the message better than text.

   However, don’t use high resolution video because every internet user might not have a high speed connection like you.

4. Personal Social Networking Sites
   These are sites where people can create their personal profile (image, likes & dislikes, description, etc) and socialize with other users of the website using messaging system, forums, friends, images, tagging, commenting, and blogging.This is an extremely popular and prominent method of networking hence we have witnessed emergence of many such sites lately. Facebook and MySpace are the two biggies of Social Networking website bunch. These are quite fruitful for you business because you can easily find people with similar interests without any cost.
5. Events
   Search on any of the search engines and I am sure you will get a couple of events (face to face) events in your locality, if it ain’t quite remote, this month. Social gathering and events are best place to expand your network and reach of your business. Here, you meet and talk to like minded people, who could eventually buy your product or help to improve your business.There are several events taking place every year on social media as well. Have a target to attend at least a couple of them to stay abreast with recent updates and news.
6. Email
   The reason to include this communication tool in social media list is – Email isn’t just used to market your products or sell the readers something directly. It involves building up a network (list), communicating with them regularly, and building a strong relationship with them. Then, it’s quite simple to sell them your service or product.if not trade, you can send images, videos, messages, and other stuff through email. However, unlike networking sites, the reach is quite narrow, limited to your list.
7. White Label Social Networks
   Though all the tools are logical, this channel makes proper sense. Several software companies have now established and developing ‘white label’ social networks for corporates that don’t opt to use MySpace and Facebook way.Few leaders like Small World Labs, open API, SDK, Sparta Social Network, and Onsite are all examples of white label. Recent research reveals that there are about 90-100 companies in this space.

   I guess some of these companies would prove to be very helpful and be successful in long term. Though MySpace and Facebook are crammed full with users, these sites don’t offer sophisticated promotional and communicational methods.

8. Wikis
   Wiki is a page of information that can be edited and added collaboratively. A very popular example is wikipedia, which is an extensive encyclopedia developed with the help of thousands of providers around the world.As soon as users get authorization (generally by owner), they are eligible to add, delete or modify information and pages in wikipedia. Creating pages is very useful as millions of people use it as a dependable source of information.
9. Podcasting
   This social media tool involves listening or watching the audio or video content that’s automatically downloaded when you subscribe to a website. This is very much like a radio where you can decide the time and date of listening to the content.Users can store content in their archives to later re-listen it. Blogs have helped my writes to take up journalism. Similarly, podcasting gave birth to many radio personalities.
10. Micro Blogs
    It is a combination of blogging and social networking sites. Here, registered users can publish short text about any topic or event on the website. A very popular micro blog is twitter.com. The message people update on such sites is actually called microposts. And when people use these posts to update their blog, it’s microblog.Twitter allows people to use just 140 characters to comment about a topic, hence merging microblog with SMS.
11. SMS
    SMS is Short Messaging Service. A user can send messages from hir or her mobile device to any other user on phone or to update anything on social networking sites. With the advancement in technology, you can use your mobile phone (especially SMS) to promote and market your business tremendously.Along with updating your social networking sites and sending promotional SMS’s, you can also subscribe to receive updates by your friends and followers. Inversely, you can too convince people to subscribe to your service of sending updates.
12. Collaborative Tools
    Tools that promote collaboration and interaction are probably the best social media channels available today. It helps to discuss, share, and work with people irrespective of time, space, boundaries, etc. Tools like chatting, blogging, social bookmarking, and commenting are few examples of collaborative tools. By using these tools appropriately you can share files, see each other, transfer data, text or sketch with people.However, successfully using these tools is more of a behavioral trait than technical. Trust is the bottom line.

It isn’t, at all, mandatory to involve the usage of social media tools to run a business. However, if you want it to be a success, you cannot afford to ignore them. Customers are technically advanced and socially active, more than companies and brands. You can reach all of them individually (face to face). There is only one resort to extend your reach – Use of Social Media Channels.