The Dot Designer can design sites globally or locally

Social Networking, and Bookmarking

The Dot Designer creates for all domain types

"friend me on facebook" / "tweet me" / "become a fan" / "network on linkedin" / "follow my updates" / "get my coupon"
Oh Good Grief said Charlie Brown!

Don't be exasperated like Chuck, let us help your business realize the marketing benefits Social Networking has to offer!

A very close friend and client, when visited in person, always responds to the statement
“It’s good to see you” with the phrase “It’s good to be seen.”

That is probably the most profound statement of the current internet era. It justifies the internet in its entirety!

During the past few years, online groups (or networks) of every type and purpose have evolved from chat rooms to becoming independent businesses. An integral part of this evolution is what is sometimes
mistakenly categorized as social websites.

Social websites such as facebook.com and twitter.com are re-defining how information is gathered and dispersed across the internet. What was once a fad has now become a necessity to doing business in today’s inter-world.

Most likely, in your daily web surfing, news gathering, shopping, or research, you have come across a particular homepage that has something like or appearing on them.

These icons/links are placed there to encourage visitors to “do something” with that website. Share it with a friend, bookmark it like a favorite place or comment on it. Regardless, if they do anything along these lines, that’s a positive sign for their business. There are over 200 such sites worldwide and certainly not all of them would apply to your business, but at least a few of them will.

LinkedIn for one, is strictly a business related “social” site. There are 2 types of LinkedIn pages, personal and company. We suggest everyone looks into at least the company page. If nothing else, you can be searched for by your industry or market segment peers. The same would apply to Facebook. If any part of your business markets a service or product to the public, you should consider a company profile and a ‘fan page’ in Facebook. Visitors can sign up and will be notified of any changes or special offerings of your business. If you have frequently changing content or news flashes you’d like to have known immediately, Twitter.com would seem appropriate. Regardless, there are ways to make your sites receive added viewers/followers, reach more potential clients/customers as well as improved search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.
After reading through some of the various options for your site, you can download a once-and-done information gathering form to fill out and submit back to us. While it may look like all items only have one line for input, rest assured that each line expands to accomodate multiple lines of information. Click here to open the form.

The following are several key sites we’d like you to consider adding to your sites’ homepages though not all are applicable for everyone. We certainly will be happy to set-up and add ANY link/icon/page to your site that you might desire. Click on any of the icons below to go to that particular social sites' homepage to learn more about each.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site; it is mainly used for professional networking. As of October 2009, LinkedIn had more than 50 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. For our purposes, it needs to be used with a company profile as well as the owner/managers profile (both are necessary to work.)

	*SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES*
	Facebook is a global social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network worldwide based on monthly active users, followed by MySpace.
	Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers.
	MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, US, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media, which is owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006. MySpace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor Facebook.
	*BOOKMARKING SITES*
	Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Delicious is one of the most popular social bookmarking services.
	While offering a service similar to the better-known del.icio.us, Faves has a wider range of functionality that encourages interaction with "friends" in rating the content of linked webpages.
	*SHARING AND RATING SITES*
	Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting stories up and down is the site's cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most Dugg stories appear on the front page.
	StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.
	Yahoo! Buzz is a community-based news article website, much like Digg, that combines the features of social bookmarking and syndication through a user interface that allows editorial control. Users can be allowed to publish their own news stories, and link to their own or another person's site that links to a full story. That drives traffic to that person's website and creates a larger market for sites that research and publish their own news articles and stories.

SPECIALTY SITE

Most everyone has a serious personal challenge themselves or has someone close to them that does. DailyStrength is a collection of safe, anonymous, online support groups focused on over 500 specific challenges to help people overcome their personal challenge or support a loved one through theirs.
DailyStrength isn't just for those living with a challenge themselves - care givers, supporters and medical professionals are welcome as well. Everyone can use a helping hand once in a while and their mission is to provide a safe forum where people can connect with others who know exactly what they're going through.

After selecting the individual sites you want linked, your homepage might look like this.

Follow, join or bookmark us thru these links

The visitor will click whichever one(s) they desire and thus become part of your ongoing marketing strategy!

Some very basic definitions (with assistance from Wikipedia)are:

A Social Networking Site focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact.

A Social Bookmarking Site is closely related to the Sharing and Rating Sites which allows users to post their list of bookmarks or favorites websites for others to search and view. These site's can also be used to meet others sharing common interests. Examples include Digg, Delicious, or StumbleUpon. Your ‘Saved Places’ or ‘Favorites’ as is common with most browsers only save the sites address for quick reference on that particular computer. A social bookmark site allows the user to save that address into a free internet site account, which can be accessed from any computer they are using.

It’s easy! All you need to do is send us your logo, some basic information about your company, and photos if you have them. You'll also want to consider your colleges/universities, fraternities/sororities etc. Any term you can think of that someone might use as search criteria will improve your chances of being discovered! We will take care of setting up your social networking pages for you, and link them to your web site. Then you too can start realizing the many benefits of social networking!

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For the Profile Information Gathering form, please click Here.
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