Business & Finance | Internet Marketing

Using Social Networking Media To Grow Your Business

It doesn’t matter what you sell. You can still leverage social media to attract more buyers to your site, build a customer list and sell more often.

One of the biggest issues most marketers face is knowing how to attract the right type of traffic for their products, services and affiliate programs. Social marketing and Web 2.0 are here to stay for they have impacted more lives, and reached many times more people than tools such as search engines and web pages. Social networking sites are based on getting like minded people to do good and it is possible to use the platforms to just talk to people and in the process “sell goods without selling”.

I am giving you some basic “Social Networking” tips that you can tap into them which I find work pretty well. With any marketing, it’s important to stay on top of it as much as possible. However with social networking, it’s almost a job in of itself as you have to maintain so many sites. Don’t get me wrong, the work you put in to some social networking sites can be worth your time to gain friends, followers and etc if you apply what you’re doing appropriately.

You know that what you offer is spectacular, but if other people don’t know that, you’re going to have a really difficult time growing your business. Social networking platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Hub Pages allow you to form relationships with people instantaneously. In social networking your connection with people is permission based and you establish your global presence. This is just another form of advertising you and your business and for free. The advantage you have with social media marketing over the traditional marketing is that your potential customer gets to know who you are and you begin to build trust. People buy from those they trust. Thus if they do buy, it is because of you, not the company you represent nor the products they don’t desire.

Here are some basic tips to help you get started to position yourself as an expert within your business niche.

1. You would want to consider choosing a few social networks you enjoy and/or who rank the highest and stick to those. Don’t try to do them all. Otherwise you have another full time job! MySpace is number one at the moment and falling in second place is Facebook. Hubpages, Linkedin and StumbleUpon are other ones high up there to consider. A few of my friends recommend Twitter. Apparently it is rated high in the U.S. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where you can send out short messages to your readers. You can get flashy with Squidoo where you can create fantastic looking photos or videos on your lens.

2. Don’t just sign up without planning to participate to some degree. It is your participation that gets people to know you and build trust.

3. Make sure to fill out your profile information, the real personal you so that your potential customer gets to know who you are and you begin to build trust. Photo and web links are very important.

4. Once you have set yourself up, now it is time to socialize. You may post an article that is factual, relevant and helpful to your readers on some sites.

5. Surf around for others in the same field as you and make some friendships.

6. Give positive comments or shout about their blogs or sites.

7. Post a few ’shouts’ a week and keep them public.

8. When someone follows you and asks for friendship, use your best judgment to do it back to them.

9. Keep your social networks fresh and don’t leave them outdated. I confess I fail to do this sometimes.

10. When you ’shout’ or post updates don’t make them about “come buy or view my products or business”. Instead give some relevant free tips or advice that are helpful for others to participate.

11. Set up a blog and post articles (best to write your own articles) so that others are aware of your websites. You can use WordPress or Blogger (both are free) to shine your expertise. A blog allows you to write short articles on topics pertinent to your customer base. Just make sure you write articles that have useful content to the readers so that they will keep coming back for more.

12. Participate in community forums that you enjoy. This will drive you some traffic.

Hope this helps.

Extensively Using Your Brand’s Social Media Strategy

Everybody is online and so your brand must have a social media strategy to reach your target market. If you still do not have it yet, then now is the best time to try thinking about it and if you have been thinking about it then now is the time to implement those plans. There are a lot of strategies you can use to reach out to your market all you need to do is to know how.

Surely you have heard of Twitter. This is similar to blogging but on a much smaller scale. In 140 words or less you can broadcast your message to everybody who is following you on Twitter. You can even tweet using your phone. This is a much faster way of updating all the people in your group about the things that are happening in your organization. Even your plans can be tweeted about so that you can create a hype of the upcoming event. It is strongly suggested that you use this extensively so that everybody knows what you are up to.

Blogging is also a great tool to use in your social media campaign. Unlike twitter where you are only limited to 140 characters, blogging gives you the freedom to talk extensively about something. You can create a platform in which your market can react to your posts. You can even upload photos on your blogs so that it creates a visual advertisement to your brand. Things and events that keep you busy or causes that matter for you and your brand are must topics for your blog. There are a lot of blog accounts that are free for you to use so there really is not reason why you should not have one.

Don’t take podcasts for granted as well. Busy people may not have enough time to read your blogs extensively. Some would prefer to have an option to download something for their mp3 player and listen to it while stuck in traffic or waiting in line. Even people who are working out in the gym prefer to listen to the things that they want to listen. So if you have an interesting message to share about your brand, then by all means do so. Try to fortify all of your forts when it comes to social media marketing.

We have touched about blogging and micro-blogging and these are something they can read. We have also talked about podcastings – something thaty our market can listen to. We can’t help but talk about going visual as well through video blogging. If you have not yet done so, create a channel at Youtube. A lot of companies have done so and it would be good if you do so as well. Just take a video camera and shoot and event or if you have a message you want to share you can have it on video as well. Upload it at Youtube and have it embedded on your social networking site. Then you just created a video for all to see.

As you can see the opportunities of having a social media strategy is endless so you better not be left behind.