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Social Networking With Manufacturers

Manufacturers make the world go around. While business has advanced leaps and bounds from a hundred years ago where most manufacturers centered on smoke belching factories, the fact remains true that these producers are key to propelling the world of business forward. These producers make much of the infrastructure for the modern world. Furthermore, the consumer economies of many Western nations are fueled by the ingenuity and productivity of these producers.

However, most manufacturers are not located adjacent to their major markets. When these major producers first arose a century ago, when the Industrial Age was in full swing and the consumer culture that forms the bedrock of the modern business climate was in its infancy, they too were located away from their main markets.

Most large factories and producers engaged in some form of international or long distance trade, especially in large nations like the United States or Russia.

Nevertheless, the process of trade and commerce was not as refined as it is today. International and long distance communication was similarly primitive. Producers’ interfacing with buyers was a far more protracted affair that was far more drawn out and slower than it is today. The connectivity of the modern world has given rise to a host of new social networking features for buyers and sellers.

Online social networking sites proliferate across the Internet. These sites enable users to get in contact with people thousands of miles away — instantaneously. While more conventional forms of technology enable communication such as this, email and other telecommunication technology to name a few, social networking sites are different.

These sites exist further the world of business because involvement with them is consensual. Parties engage in social networking because they want to reap the benefits of staying in touch with potential business colleagues. In short, it saves time and helps them manage their businesses with more efficiency.

Social networking sites, however, are primarily for private use. The massive social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter exist to facilitate communication between private individuals. This is not entirely appropriate for professional use. Nevertheless, the massive popularity of these sites has led to the creation of social networking websites that are specifically designed to accommodate business professionals that are in need of connecting to possible partners.

The online social networking model has given birth to a whole host of websites that cater to business people that are looking to have the same thing. This enables buyers and sellers to interact and interface with one another. Digitally leveraging one’s network to source a product from China or find a new sales channel in Australia is a more efficient way to meet your business goals. This allows manufacturers to interface with buyers in a fresh new way that benefits both parties.

Social Networking Blogs

Google the word “blog” today and you’ll get somewhere hovering around 2 billion results. Now, without going into elaborate Google indexing theories, that doesn’t necessarily mean there are 2 billion active blogs, but does prove the enormous popularity nonetheless.

The term blog dates back to the late ’90′s when the already slightly acronym-ized term weblog, used for for the newer fashion of posting journals, or logs, on the web, was shortened even further into the term blog.

Blogs exploded throughout the next decade as celebrity and well-known political activists posts gained enormous popularity and exposure.

As social network sites burst on the scene and eventually became the internet mainstay for over a half a billion users, the novelty of blogs dulled slightly, but not their importance.

Many very popular blog authors are routinely spotlighted on national news-talk shows, talk radio, internet magazines, gossip sites, etc.

But most social network sites somewhat ignored blogs and actually formed a new style of blogging. We started notifying our online friends of our every move by what would be called micro-blogging. Twitter popped on the scene a couple of years ago and pushed the micro-blog to new limits (140 character limits, to be exact). People are constantly tweeting their thoughts to the world through the popular service.

While we try to stay abreast of our friends and keep our “followers” notified of our daily thoughts and activities via these abbreviated bursts of mental activity, many social networking sites like Viewcaster.net ( http://www.viewcaster.net/ ) are again embracing the blog.

The fit is a good one too, as users can use other site tools to spread the word and snippets of information from their latest blogging masterpiece. Some sites let you select sharing access so that you can keep your thoughts private, truly like a journal, or make public to share with the world. And most that do offer blogs also even offer the ability to embed pictures and even video in your blogs.

Micro-blogging will continue to have its place. But its good to see these social networking sites offering blogs in their repertoire of tools.

So start creating. If your favorite home on the web doesn’t offer full blog support, do some searching for social media sites that do. If you have never blogged, you enjoy the extra large palette that blogging gives you. If you have strayed away from blogging, you’ll welcome having your creative friend back.