Web 2.0 and social networking for businesses

You may have heard a lot of discussion about web 2.0 or web2 in the last few years, and understand that it can boost your online rankings and brand, but it's a difficult concept to define, particularly if you are not familiar with the web. This guide will give you an introduction to web 2.0 and what it can do for your business.

• What is web 2.0?
• What can web 2.0 do for my business?
• Marketing using web 2.0

What is web 2.0?

Web 2.0 evolved after the dot com crash around 2001, and encompasses websites which rely on their users to generate their content. This could be through writing a blog, or writing about certain topics as with Wikipedia, sharing videos like on YouTube, or creating profiles about themselves and linking with other users like on Facebook or MySpace.

• Web 2.0 evolved after the dot com crash in the early 2000s
• It involves websites where the users generate their own content
• Examples include Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook - and even Smarta.

What can web 2.0 do for my business?

With web 2.0, you can raise awareness of your business, either by creating a community of users who return to your website to check their profile and communicate with other users, or by creating a special profile for your business on other web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 sites can also help you to recruit young, technologically literate employees.

• Raise awareness of your business
• Keep users returning to your site
• Recruit new employees

Marketing using web 2.0

If you are looking to reach a young, tech-savvy audience, web 2.0 is a great free way to do your marketing. This can be either by releasing a video on a site such as YouTube which, if users like it, has the potential to go 'viral'; by creating a profile on a social network such as Facebook and keeping your customers updated on recent news; or even by creating a blog for your website.

• Release videos on YouTube
• Create a profile on social networks
• Write a blog on your website

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