If you had managed to create a great web experience, chances are, visitors would want to revisit the site, but problems arise when they do not know when will be the next update, and in time when they revisit the website to find that it’s not updated; they might eventually lose interest in your website.

The most viable way would be by putting up a notification on the main page of the website and that’s also provided that they actually re-visit the website on a regular basis to notice the new update. The worst thing that can happen is a change of web address. In an instance, anyone who has bookmarked or have the website in their browser history would have lost their connection to the site. There are still search engines, but that’s assuming the visitors would go through the extent to search for the site in the first place.

The good news is there are actually plenty of solutions which could help you effectively stay connected with visitors to your website. Below are some practical examples in which you could explore.

Mailing list
One of the most conventional ways to connect with visitors would be requesting them to register and subscribe to a mailing list. Upon registering with their emails, updates would then be easily sent to them via email.

RSS Feeds
RSS Feeds or “Rich Site Summary” Feeds help to deliver updates to the website visitors. This is especially useful if yours is a website that regularly changes content. So instead of having to revisit the site to check out updates, visitors would just need to subscribe to RSS feeds and they would have the luxury of being automatically notified when there are new updates to the website. Subscribers can choose from a variety of ways to receive their feeds, they can either choose to receive it on a RSS reader such as Google Reader or even have the feeds sent to their emails.

Leverage on Social Networking
Leveraging on social networking would be considered the most robust way in terms of staying connected. Upon creating a profile, it could then be linked to the main website.

This would allow visitors the option to either become a fan on Facebook, follower on Twitter, etc. In recent developments, A Facebook “Like” could even be integrated within the main website and visitors could instantly become fans without having to leave the website.

The advantages of having a social networking profile are that it not only allows gathering and identification of visitors in the form of Fans or Followers (provided if they decide to join your Social Networking group), it also helps to effectively facilitate 2-way communication.

In the case of any new updates, you could easily post them on your social networking profile and moreover it provides a platform in which fans/followers can easily give their feedback or comment and also the chance for you to engage them personally.

Moving forward to a new era in web advancement, it is of utmost importance that your corporate website is capable of two way communication i.e ability to connect with your visitors, failing to do so might result in you trailing behind your competitors.

But the good news for businesses is that we’re living in the era of social media; more specifically social networking; which is fundamentally shifting the way the world communicates and how we look at information, with the advent of social networking sites, this new movement has paved the way for businesses to connect, engage and listen to real people on a global scale.

One name that is instantly associated with social networking is Facebook. Having only started in 2004 as an internal university network, it grew exponentially in the next couple of years. Presently, it offers more than 70 different translations and has recently hit 500 million registered users.

But before you start planning extravagant strategies using Facebook, it’s wiser to have an overview of the other social networks out there, especially the dominant social media networking sites in your target markets. Even though Facebook is generally the most popular social networking site in the world, a host of similar social networking sites still dominate the local social networking scenes in some of the most populous nations in the world.

Take China for instance, the most populous nation in the world. Its social networking scene is being dominated by QQ and Renren, with QQ boasting an astronomical number of 300 million users and counting.

Although Google’s Orkut never seemed to have hit off in most parts of the world, it is the number one social networking site in Brazil, which is listed in the fifth most populated nation in the world. Orkut was also previously the number one social networking site in India (2^nd most populous nation in the world), but according to statistics from comscore, Facebook had recently overtaken them as number one in India.

In the far eastern world, Mixi is the number one social networking tool in Japan and in South Korea, the crown belongs to Cyworld.

In Russia, the scene is dominated by a few local names with Vkontakte heading the pack with Mail and Fotostrana coming close behind.

Another competitor of Facebook, Hi-5; leads the charge in countries such as Mexico, Peru, Romania and Portugal.

Friendster who has lost its leadership position to Facebook, still holds a strong social presence in South East Asian countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.

According to statistics from socialnomics.com, 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisements. Businesses can now look into leveraging on the prevalent usage of social networking sites as a tool for analyzing social and cultural trends of their target markets.

The revolution of these social networking sites has certainly helped to erase borders and allow people from around the world to be easily connected, making the world a much smaller place.

Such is its ease of use that anyone with basic or little computer knowledge can easily sign up for membership on any of the available social networking sites and place their profile online for the whole world to see.

In terms of cost, it is perhaps the most cost effective platform out there for businesses to utilize as the cost of joining any social networking site and creating a business profile is usually free or at a low cost

With the participants of social networking sites being expected to grow even more exponentially in the next few years, the potential of social networking looks promising; considering the significant opportunities and the extent of its reach, businesses can tap on social networking sites to help expand their global presence.

[Source: Cindy King, Brain Solis - Engage]