Never in the history of mankind there was an opportunity for individuals and families to be connected and communicate in such a cool and easy fashion. This new media has allowed individuals a chance to speak and connect with people from across the world, and also learn information that they weren’t aware of. The top resources within the new media movement is social networking sites.

Social networking sites were created to allow individuals to communicate with others who share similar interests/activities, or information or friends. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

At present the count of active members in the popular social networks has increased a lot when compared to the past year. Social networking has become something more interesting and useful. Many people use social networking sites on a daily basis.

Social network visits increased 82% year-over-year and the average time spent per person at such sites increased by 67% year-over-year in May 2009.

One of the first social networking site was classmates.com which was established in 1995. It introduced the concept of user profiles and of short messages sent and received by friends on the website. The basic purpose was to keep in touch with old friends. Sixdegrees.com came in 1997, and is considered to be the first social networking website to have all features in one complete package.

But now there are so many social networking sites evolved today. Among them the top are Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linked In, Tagged, Friendster, Orkut and so many.

In USA top social networking sites are MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo so on.

In UK top social networking sites are Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter so on.

In India top social networking sites are Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Twitter so on.

In most of the countries Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are popular and are used by most of the people.

The main trend changes in today’s social networks:

The Mobile Social Networking: Mobile social networks are in fashion especially with the rise of the iPhone. Facebook is a leader in mobile social networks. Since social networks are started in the online space, social networking software has been developed.

Instant messaging software is now available for the mobile phone users. And this instant messaging is welcomed by the public. Most of the popular social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut have developed social networking software for mobile phones. Hence without doubt, the social networking software for the mobile phones will be a great trend of this year.

Social Networking for Business: Now a day, Social networking is commonly used for business, like promoting business on social networking. Classified sites like AdsGlobe.com allows its users to update their social network profiles on various social networking sites automatically on posting an ad opening door for the social ads.

Social Networks for Older Generation: Another interesting fact was the growth of older generation users. 2 to 3 years back social networks was considered a marketing tool for the young generation but with the growth of the LinkedIns, Xings of the world, there has been a major shift. Facebook serves as a good example, it added twice as many 50-64 year old’s visitors (13.6 million) than under 18s (7.3 million).

Social shopping is also becoming popular as online shoppers are sharing their ideas, opinions and reviews with fellow shoppers in sites like DealsGlobe.com

Check out social ads on AdsGlobe.com. Check out hot deals, coupons on DealsGlobe.com.

Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing: three crucial steps in the life of a lead!

The first of these steps is lead generation. This is the process of finding those parties who already have an interest in what is being sold. There are several ways of generating new leads; including purchasing leads from a third party organization or having web visitors submit their contact information. These leads are more valuable to a remote sales company if they have been newly generated, because these leads are more likely to convert into a sale. No lead can be ignored in a data base somewhere and still be considered a ?hot lead.?

Just as important to successful remote sales is lead response management. A customer relationship manager (CRM) is designed to help sales reps with lead management. Leads generated can be uploaded to the CRM from a variety of data formats or downloaded automatically from the company?s website.

The lead response management tools built into the CRM allows sales representatives to contact newly imported leads immediately and efficiently. Within minutes of a web generated lead being imported into the CRM that lead is called and the call is routed to an available sales representative. Newly imported lists of leads are also dialed as soon as possible. Often new lead are left uncalled for 24 to 48 hours, lead response management stops this unacceptable practice from happening.

(These CRMs manage all the interactions that these leads will continue to have with the company. They are powerful tools for tracking and analyzing sales data. Definitely worth the investment.)

As leads progress, customer relationship management programs organize contacts in three groups: leads, prospects, and customers. Each contact group can be marketed to and supported separately with the emails, faxes, and mailers. Each of these groups can also be designated as the contact list for a power dialer or voice broadcasting system. Sales representatives can adapt their scripts to address the needs of each group of contacts

But even with such awesome personalizing of the sales process not every lead will convert into a sale immediately. Some inside sales companies would abandon those leads. Lead nurturing is an alternative to simply abandoning leads that did not convert. Lead nurturing is the process of keeping in contact with non-converted leads and providing quality interaction with them so they will become a customer in the future. Email, phone calls, mailers, and faxes are all used in lead nurturing.

While lead generation is a critical aspect of inside sales, a CRM allows sales reps to manage and nurture those leads until they become converted customers.

Most people in business know that without lead management, you can’t survive. Joined with dialer software, you’ve got a plan that is essential for your future survival as a company.