There are tools that businesses can use to market their products or services outside of advertising. They include search engine optimization and blogging, among others. Some believe the next big online marketing trend will be businesses building their own private-label social networking sites to further that sense of corporate transparency to the public and to promote a sense of community among users and customers.
Companies like Ning.com (ning.com) and GoingOn (goingon.com) enable businesses to sign up and create social networks they can customize and brand as their own.
Ning.com says businesses can be up and running within minutes, with multiple administrators, custom member profile questions, tools for uploading photos, videos and music, blogging tools and widget add-ons. A basic Ning.com social networking site is free and comes with 5 GB of storage and 100 GB of bandwidth. However, businesses can enhance their sites by running ads for $19.95 per month, using their own domain names for $4.95 per month and increasing their capacity for $9.95 each month for each additional 5 GB of storage and 100 GB of bandwidth.
GoingOn similarly allows multiple administrators, corporate branding and music, video and photo sharing, but differentiates itself with “networked blogging,” which lets businesses aggregate people around shared interests, solicit feedback and opinion and capture knowledge. Signup is free.
Other companies offer single-license software that businesses can host themselves or through a recommended hosting provider. Alstrasoft.com (alstrasoft.com/efriends.htm) offers a social networking package called E-friends for $280 per year with features including blogs, forums, text-based chat and event planning. Administrators can use the integrated banner ads system to earn extra income by publishing paid banner ads on their E-Friends sites. Alstrasoft says customers can either host the software on their own servers, or sign up with its recommended hosting provider Ubiquity Web Hosting (ubiquityhosting.com) and receive a $100 discount for the E-friends script.
Another software option is Web Scribble Solutions’ webNetwork (webscribble.com/products/webnetwork/index.shtml) that businesses can purchase for $199. Web Scribble also offers Web hosting services for customers, starting at $9.99 for 500 MB of space, 50 GB of bandwidth and one MySQL database.
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