Social Media Integration

     With the booming popularity of social networking websites Facebook and Twitter it comes as no surprise that most companies now utilize these services to directly connect and advertise to their target audience.

     One such company is the International Gaming Network, or IGN for short. Located at www.ign.com, IGN is one of the Internets largest video game journalism websites. They have a vast network that covers many other topics as well. One of the ways IGN utilizes Facebook by having small “Like” buttons posted around the website, which when clicked will place a link to the article on the users Facebook news feed. The users friend will then see the link to the article and the ability to “Like” it as well. This generates viral traffic. On all of IGNs articles the respective author lists their Twitter username giving the users of the website a direct, down to earth way to interact with the staff. Everyone once in a while IGN will post an article based off of feedback they received. I believe this is brilliant as it gives users incentive to continue to share stories and interact with the website thus giving IGN more viral feedback.

     Another website that I believe employs a very smart usage of Facebook and Twitter is the blogging website tumblr. Located at www.tumblr.com, tumblr allows you to host and customize your own blog with rich media features such as embedded video and sound. Tumblr offers a feature that when turned on will automatically share your blog posts with Facebook and Twitter. When friends of users of tumblr see their posts on either their Twitter or Facebook feeds this will begin to generate viral traffic.

     As both the internet and social networking grows we will start to see some neat new integrations between the two.  What do you think could be the next step? Leave your reply in the comments below.