Joining the league of Search Engine Optimization is Social Media Optimization wherein businesses can increase their visibility and target customers directly. If the goal of a business is to reach out to its customers and create a personal dialogue with its end users along with increasing popularity, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter present the perfect opportunity. As Facebook and Twitter have become an integral part of people’s lives, gathering feedback and getting to know the customer’s opinion could not have been easier.

While both the social networking sites open the opportunity to connect personally with one’s existing and prospective customers, both have a different scope of operations. While one can find friend lists and fans on Facebook, followers can be found on Twitter. While Facebook has status messages and live feed, Twitter relies on tweets to spread the word. However, both sites offer ample opportunity to connect personally with consumers and reap the benefits of viral marketing.

There are various platforms via which a business may opt to interact with its consumers or promote its products and services, the most popular being making a page on Facebook or following and getting followers on Twitter. Creating a page on Facebook not only helps connect with existing consumers but also helps in engaging potential customers. The possibility of putting up videos as well as content on these pages along with sharing updates not only creates awareness but also makes for an intimate user experience. Likewise, by posting tweets on Twitter and tweeting back to those of followers, helps create trust and creates a sense of intimacy with customers.

The second platform via which businesses can increase visibility is through Facebook Social Ads. These ads have proven to be far more effective than the traditional banner ads and skyscraper ads. The placement and easy access of these social ads on Facebook makes for more visibility than the traditional forms of promotion. Both the social networking sites offer statistics tools that can help a business in gauging how fruitful its promotion activities have been. While Facebook offers insights through its statistics tools, Twitter has third party applications to parcel its data in a more meaningful way. Clicked links are traceable on Twitter by using Cli.gs and Bit.ly. Twitter also offers to measure a business’ influence and growth on the network by offering Twitter Analyzer and Twitter Counter for the same. Therefore, these social networking sites can not only be used to reach out to consumers, but also be used to measure the effectiveness of activity.

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Can this mean google moving out from China? Google made an official statement on its blog as “In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google^[3] “ Whereas there would be no financial and economic planners throughout the world who would not like to keep themselves off from Chinese markets including Google. But Google business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and it does have potentially far-reaching consequences as stated ^[3] . The new cyber warfare is getting a little tricky for all the major financial, defense contractors and major companies.  Prof. Howard A Schmidt, at McAfee Cybercrime advisory very early said : “Cyber warfare is now a part of human conflict that we should get used to seeing more often. If a major cyber conflict between nation-states were to erupt, it is very likely that the private sector would get caught in the crossfire,” So it might be the time for these companies to buckle up their security.

Lets hope that these attacks on Chinese activist on Gmail accounts are not for keeping their rights of speech restricted. There are policies in China about publishing and rights of speech but this statement shouldn’t be governed by hacking into other systems. It is yet to see if US finally take measures against China^[7] . Let us wait and see what happens on this front.

To keep us secured and relevant to these recent attacks F-secure has posted youtube video below. ^[6] The video would provide more information on the current issue.

References

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/was-it-actually-google-that-tanked-the-shanghai-stock-market-2010-1
2. http://www.insurancetech.com/blog/archives/2010/01/after_hack_goog.html
3. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-denies-google-hacking-claims-1868599.html
5. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/China-has-a-history-of-hacking-computers/articleshow/5442099.cms
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFw9ZHy0V3c&feature=player_embedded
7. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-14/u-s-may-take-formal-measures-against-china-over-google-hacking.html