I will not forget the first time i logged onto Facebook and created my profile. This was about two years ago and then no one hardly knew anything about Facebook. I remember then, the social network with all the buzz was Hi5.com and then MySpace became bigger after that. Today the talk is about Facebook when it comes to social networking and almost everyone you can think of has a Facebook profile. What is it about social networks that get everyone hooked onto them?

What makes a social network great is the ability to communicate and interact with people you know or you share similar interests with and be able to communicate with them from one central place. From a user’s perspective, social networks are great due to the reasons I have just mentioned. But let us now look at how social networks affect businesses.

Social networks have given businesses a great marketing platform. Social networks drive thousands, if not millions of visitors to their website on a daily basis. At Rand Mediacom we have a theory which is: Content = Traffic = Money . What this basically means is that if a website has great content, that content will turn into (equal) traffic. If the content of a website is good, people will continue visiting that website. With the traffic comes (equals) the money. If a website is having millions of visitors everyday, marketers will be streaming to that website to put their adverts on that website as they are guaranteed of millions of visitors viewing their adverts online and chances are higher for those exposed to the advert to click on it and act upon it.

Now with social networks, you are guaranteed of high traffic if there are many members to that social network website. This gives the owners of the social network the ability to earn revenue through advertising on the website. Businesses should opt to advertising on a social network because they get high amounts of traffic and they can target specific people for specific products / adverts. For example, a social network for mothers-to-be would be ideal for businesses who deal with baby and child products and services to advertise on. The business would be targeting their target market to the tee. There really would be no point in a whiskey vendor advertising on the mothers-to-be social network as most of that networks members would not be interested in the product being advertised to them. The whiskey vendor may then decide to find another social network with members who would be interested in purchasing whiskey. Targeting the correct social network to advertise on is critical.

The beauty of advertising on social networks as opposed to your traditional websites is that social networks have a high return of visitors to the websites who log back onto the website constantly to check if anything new has happened in their social network. With social networks, the users generate new content everyday, be in new photos, videos or blog posts. For example a website like Facebook; Most Facebook members log onto the website at least twice a week if not everyday to see what is happening. This regular return of visitors is what creates the high traffic. An advertiser would be more interested in advertising on a website with high traffic volumes so that their ads gain more exposure.

For assistance in finding the right social network to advertise on please feel free to contact Rand Mediacom and we will gladly assist you gain maximum exposure for your brand, product and service on the right online channels.