After exploring our most recent "Work in Progress", it is quite clear that we are very serious about Social-Media.

You may be asking why we have such a passionate desire to help our clients enter this brave-new-world, and the answer is quite simple when you boil it down to basics. Social-Media is able to transform the concept of "Send-To-A-Friend" into "Send-To-All-Your-Friends-Friends" too!

A recent report from Universal McCann shows that over 50% of United States citizens are now using social-media.

Read Write Web goes on to explain that in the 18 - 34 year-old demographic, as many as 85% of users are actively engaging with Social-Media.

It is clear that corporations are quickly trying to catch-up with the masses and introduce their own networks, with some excellent examples provided by Mashable, which include:

The Best Western Hotels sponsor Amy’s Blog

 

Ford provide plenty of RSS feeds

 

McDonald’s looks ugly but covers Corporate Responsibility

 

Starbucks is modern and slick and fosters free-thought

Not all social-media networks need to be open to all members of the public. They can be privately labeled and strictly available for employees if necessary. They can even be locked-away from other countries using IP tracking methods. At present, companies tend to loose focus when hearing words such as "blogs" and "widgets" or even "social-networks".

Unfortunately, these networks provide a foundation for some of the most powerful online-marketing technologies available, which is why we feel it is important to take a moment to look at these perspectives from a "Common Craft’s Plain English" point-of-view:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

 

Web-Logs (Blogs)

 

Social Bookmarking

 

Social-Networking

With Red FM, we introduced several social-media features, including:

These act as a basic foundation for future up-coming features, such as the "Create Your Own Radio" web-application that will later be integrated with the website and allow users to essentially create their own radio-stations, and broadcast online across a wide selection of social-media networks