New England area website marketing firm, Brick Marketing introduces a number of new social media marketing workshops in which they will be conducting to help business owners and marketing managers who want to learn more about just how their business can take advantage of the internet.

Brick Marketing president, Nick Stamoulis, will be teaching New England business owners from coast to coast how they can safely and securely venture into the online marketing space through means of search engine optimization and email marketing. He will be touching upon how important it is to include social media marketing in your organic link building and also you’re marketing efforts as well. Nick will be teaching the basics of how to properly optimize your website for search in order to be 100% search engine friendly. He will be showing real life examples of successful SEO techniques that have been performed in the industry on other websites.

For more information on all of the New England marketing workshops please visit the workshop page at the following link:
http://www.brickmarketing.com/internet-marketing-workshops.htm

So here we have another social platform that is all the hype at the water cooler. You visit Twitter you see no ads, no intricate graphics, and a very easy to navigate platform. What you do see is lots of people telling their toes are itchy and they just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How has offering this information allowed this website to spread like wildfire? People are curious to what other people are doing and it is evident that this need is growing. I like twitter, I never generate a real conversations but when I look at my Google analytic’s account I notice that my messages do not go unnoticed. is it important for you, as a business owner, to be on Twitter? I think any social platform that has that much traffic and interaction deserves a few chances. Connect to some of your competitors and see how their strategy helps them or what their approach is in communicating people. Some companies set up a feed from their blog and some blast out promotions all day. Twitter is very powerful and can work but it is a trial and error on how it will successfully work for your business. One companies approach is not necessarily the right approach for you so it is important to try different things. Many large successful companies are using Twitter everyday to further grow their organization. Companies like Comcast even use it to take care of customer service related issue. Twitter is the new water cooler now and you don’t even have to get up to start gossiping.

More and more people attempt to try to jump on the bandwagon with social networking websites thinking that if you build it they will come. Not the case, launching a social networking website these days requires more than just a good idea.

Simply building a website and letting it sit will not bring in traffic. Yes Facebook and Myspace are giants and everyone would like to be like them but its going to take a new spin and approach if you want to launch a social networking website. Targeting a Niche is getting more and more difficult as websites like Facebook allow you to launch groups with like minded individuals for networking purposes. There were many websites right around the time of Myspace and Facebook that crashed and burned and these giants were rewarded with that traffic. Ten years ago you could launch a website and traffic might have just showed up knocking on your door but with all the clutter online now you need a spear gun marketing approach to bring in good website traffic. Social networking websites are everywhere. Most of them look similar to a barren wasteland or filled with spam bots.

Just ask Mark Zuckerberg, when he was getting Facebook ramped up many don’t know that he was opening credit cards left and right just to pay the hosting fees. Guess what, he still can’t make money on it. Before you decide to cash in your savings account to build that new social networking site that you are guaranteed will generate hundreds of thousands of visitors, do some home work and make sure this is the path you really want to take.

There have been many blogs writing and praising Obama recently for his amazing approach at leveraging himself online to win the recent presidential election. Obama has ignited a new path of thinking that I think we will start seeing many other politicians take to become visible for any political race.

Obama knew how to get the young vote and he did it with every possible social networking site he could get his hands on. Obama had created profiles at all the top social networking sites and the traffic numbers were astonishing. I think this shows the significant difference in thinking style from McCain. McCain did give the internet an honest attempt but I don’t think he ever thought that he really needs to step up his game online in order to gain an edge on Obama. I have a feeling McCain, like many others, thought there was no way the internet could give him an advantage but it did for Obama. Obama, in a very short amount of time, created a brand around his name. The Obama “change” brand which he channeled and pushed through the all the social networking websites was burned into the minds of many individuals of all ages. Many experts feel that his online marketing strategy clearly gave him a competitive advantage to winning this election.

In today’s day in age there are still many non believers in the power of the internet. They say its a fad or a gimmick and it clearly doesn’t work for their business. Well Obama’s belief in the internet might have very well allowed him to become the president of the United States. Sure for many businesses social media will not be end all be all but for all of those non-believers who don’t feel the internet will do anything it is time to allow your brain to enter the digital world way of thinking or you could find yourself closing the curtains on your business for good.

I have been thinking about this topic for a while and I think it is really important to touch upon this issue because someday this could open up into a whole new area for doctors to analyze and study patients. I’m sure it has already begun but the addiction level some have to social networking websites is becoming a serious problem. You all know who you are and we all of at least one in our circle of friends. Those that are out with a group of friends and cannot stop checking their Facebook or Myspace page through the iPhone or Blackberry. I see it occurring more and more every where I go but it seems the ability to stay connected with others whether you barley know them and haven’t seen them in ten years or you just saw them last weekend seems to be consuming peoples lives. I personally know people that when they are out they are glued to their mobile device responding, updating friend lists and i can’t help to stare at them and wonder just how bad this sickness has spread. How bad is it effecting their lives at homes with wives, children what ever their situation maybe.

Don’t get me wrong I enjoy using social networking website like anybody else but for some people it has reached a very unhealthy point in their life. Am I the only one that notices this? Some would rather be connected digitally online than actually live in person with people they know. I mean if you are out with a group of friends and you have someone that constantly checks their Myspace every few minutes they would clearly rather be connected with their “web friends” than their real live friends. I wouldn’t write this post if I didn’t see this happening more and more. The social networking websites are not to blame because they are just the tool and it is up to us humans to show some self control. What happens when your social networking takes over your life? Some people are so obsessed with becoming social networking celebrities that they become out of touch with real life and everything around them is effected, their job, school everything important to them outside of their PDA or computer.

So this leads to another question, is this becoming a full blown condition? If so, how do you treat it? Like weening of a junkie at a heroin clinic? the ability to be so connected with total strangers has truly become a historical change in social behavior that will be someday studied with great scrutiny. Right now we are at the very nose end of it. We know meeting people out in person can sometimes be very difficult but the ability to hide behind a computer has revolutionized the social interaction landscape as we know. You can find everything from a pizza to a wife online and this alone fills many different voids for people.

Is it just me or does anybody agree or disagree with me? please let me know how you feel about this social networking disease that is slowly infiltrating our generation and generations to come.