Social networking has taken off throughout the country. Everybody from your grandmother to your boss has a Facebook account, blog, Twitter, or MySpace page–and usually all of the above. The Web 2.0 phenomenon isn’t just for techies anymore. From Digg to Del.icio.us, the number of online exposure options for your website have multiplied exponentially.
As a result, social networking communication has become the 21st century equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. Where once we’d pick up the phone to tell a neighbor or a friend about the movie we just saw or the great restaurant we just discovered, now we post about in on our blog, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, spreading the news to hundreds of people at once.
This phenomenon has changed the way savvy website owners spread the word about their sites, products, or online business. These days, the best way to generate buzz and attention for your website, article, or products is to get people talking about it on social networking sites. Just one person mentioning your business or website on Twitter can gain you hundreds or even thousands of hits. If you’re lucky, the link will go viral, and you’ll see as many hits as you can manage, and increased profits because of it.
The trick is to get people talking. And one way to get people talking is to make it easy for them to start the conversation. Widgets such as Share This can help visitors to your site start talking about you on any or all of their favorite social networking sites with a single click. They have to do very little, and, even better, once you’ve installed the widget, you don’t have to do anything at all except sit back and watch the hits roll in.
Widgets are easy to add to your site, usually involving little more than a quick copy and paste into your code. With a widget available at the bottom or at the side of every page, visitors can quickly submit your article or product to Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and a wide selection of other well-known social networking sites. This easy, one-click access to their favorite accounts will encourage visitors to refer you through the widget, thus increasing your exposure exponentially.
While some of these sites, such as Digg and StumbleUpon, have the ability to bring your site in front of considerably more people than others, such as Facebook, every added link is a possible new customer for your website. People who see your site or article linked at Digg, for example, can add their recommendation with a quick click, sending your site link higher in the rankings and thus gaining even more attention. If you’re lucky enough to be sent to the top of the list at any of these sites, you could see your hits increase dramatically–all without doing anything but adding that widget to your site.
Adding a widget like Share This takes much of the work out of social networking both for you and your site visitors. Add a widget today. You’ll be glad you did, as you see your hits multiply tomorrow.
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