Time 15:19

The idea of a group of people sharing information can apply to hobbyists (like whitewater,try KayakMind, a product launch team, or a global force of loyal fans. One of my current favorites is Natasha Bedingfield Many companies struggle with whether such a beneficial collaboration is a technology question. There are plenty of platforms that exist for significant sharing of multimedia, and text along with other features like blogging, and forums.

Today we speak with Gina Bianchini, the co-founder and CEO of an exceptional platform for creating and growing social networks, Ning. Provident Partners has a private network for listeners of the Marketing Edge podcast and readers of this blog on the Ning platform. To receive an invitation just email marketingedge AT providentpartners.net and put Sandbox in the subject line.

Saturn cars inspires owners to exchange stories and ideas as well as company representatives to share what’s new and trendy in the car market. There’s plenty for movie lovers to enjoy on the Netflix pics site, and on the Provident Partners Social Media Sandbox you can ask questions, get answers, upload photos and video and form groups and forums for more detailed collaboration.

Bianchini said the Ning Creators social network, a network of thousands of Ning users, is an excellent place to develop new feature ideas, get feedback from users, and a central place to praise and vent.

It’s all about the interaction, the information, and the journey that the group goes on together. Jump on.

Twitter is a social networking combination blogging site. It is where people can follow the quick thoughts of others throughout the day. Many people share ideas in a sentence or two then link to a long piece, video or audio file. You can even identify people that might be interesting to follow by using a search engine specifically designed for twitter, one of them is called www.tweetscan.com

My twitter follower @pchaney today tweeted (meaning wrote a message for others to see) Love to see a Top 10 Benefits to Using Social Networking with Your Business. You are my inspiration @pchaney, at least for this blog post.

For the purposes of answering @pchaney the definition of social networking I’ll use is, a group of like-minded individuals gathered digitally, in some cases you already know these people, in others they may not know anyone prior to meeting on the network. This may not be the Top 10, but they are ten and I’m sure readers will add more.

1. Expand knowledge of a topic – benefit: product improvement, market research
2. Extend your knowledge to others – benefit: increased web traffic or exposure to network
3. Efficient communications – benefit: speed to knowledge
4. Test ideas – benefit: reduce market research costs and time
5. Exponential reach – benefit: you’ll increase the chances of knowing what you don’t know and you never know the potential of that
6. Get new ideas – benefit: learning from others makes you innovative
7. Promote your stuff – benefit: drive traffic to your web or physical destinations
8. Create member style community, example employees – benefit: greater candid communications to improve organizational process, products, working environment yada yada yada.
9. Training and formalized learning – benefit: speed ways to fix problems or create more proficient customer reps, tech support, etc.
10. Monetize eyeballs – benefit: yes where there are people there is the potential for revenue

Oh yes, and there is the added benefit of using a social network for business of asking a question and getting a direct answer. Hope this helps? Probably the best place to learn about the variety and possibilities of social networking is to visit Ning. www.ning.com It’s the social network of social networks with thousands of communities using the technology platform.