How to "do" Social Networking?Marketing For Business Profits
To sum it briefly, you should define your audience, locate your potential customers, build a social relationship with them and promote your brand and website. What you choose to do on these sites depends on what your business needs.
Social Networking How To's
In most communities it is recommended to not start out by promoting your brand or website. If you start out by “spamming” you are likely to get kicked out of that social community. The site administrators will most likely ban you from returning. Being too direct in your sales pitch could also scare people away. So, think passive, think indirect...help people with "how to's" "why's". Listen, share and be humble. Bragging about the money are making is not going to win you friends.
What is the next step? Be yourself, be human, open up a little and show people who you are. Tell them your story and focus on things that may help you stand out. Visit communities that interest you personally and get involved.
While initiating contact on social media sites is great, it is just as important to continue to keep in contact. Don’t just start something and not finish. For example, starting posts on a blog is great, but you need to show people you are not just visiting, but are there to listen to them. When people add comments in response they might need a response from you. If available, follow or subscribe to the hot feeds that you have contributed to.
Make a video of you living your life and just being you instead of doing promotional video's about your product. Add a link to your website at the end. That is not to say that you are not able to promote your business, just be creative and add value to the site instead of treating it like a direct advertising platform.
Take advantage of the widgets supplied by most of these sites and post them on your website/blog. Yet another way for people to find you and also makes the most of the viral nature of a community based site.
How to know if it is working
The obvious indicators are traffic and sales, however for the more ‘hardcore’ marketer there is analytic software which allows goals to be set up and monitors conversion rates. If you plan to build your social networking fast, map out a campaign tracking system first. Spend some time planning this from the beginning and you know exactly where the results are coming from and where to invest your time. The most important thing is the ‘doing’ part. So the sooner you get signed up the better!
To sum it briefly, you should define your audience, locate your potential customers, build a social relationship with them and promote your brand and website. What you choose to do on these sites depends on what your business needs.
Social Networking How To's
In most communities it is recommended to not start out by promoting your brand or website. If you start out by “spamming” you are likely to get kicked out of that social community. The site administrators will most likely ban you from returning. Being too direct in your sales pitch could also scare people away. So, think passive, think indirect...help people with "how to's" "why's". Listen, share and be humble. Bragging about the money are making is not going to win you friends.
What is the next step? Be yourself, be human, open up a little and show people who you are. Tell them your story and focus on things that may help you stand out. Visit communities that interest you personally and get involved.
While initiating contact on social media sites is great, it is just as important to continue to keep in contact. Don’t just start something and not finish. For example, starting posts on a blog is great, but you need to show people you are not just visiting, but are there to listen to them. When people add comments in response they might need a response from you. If available, follow or subscribe to the hot feeds that you have contributed to.
Make a video of you living your life and just being you instead of doing promotional video's about your product. Add a link to your website at the end. That is not to say that you are not able to promote your business, just be creative and add value to the site instead of treating it like a direct advertising platform.
Take advantage of the widgets supplied by most of these sites and post them on your website/blog. Yet another way for people to find you and also makes the most of the viral nature of a community based site.
How to know if it is working
The obvious indicators are traffic and sales, however for the more ‘hardcore’ marketer there is analytic software which allows goals to be set up and monitors conversion rates. If you plan to build your social networking fast, map out a campaign tracking system first. Spend some time planning this from the beginning and you know exactly where the results are coming from and where to invest your time. The most important thing is the ‘doing’ part. So the sooner you get signed up the better!
