Nowadays, the Internet is saturated with everyone trying to make money with their particular online business, and there is a lot of competition. Even the smartest online business owners have to use every resource available to generate leads for their websites.
There really is no shortage of methods and techniques that Internet businesses can use to market their services or products. Some of the methods that are effective and cheap are PPC advertising, article marketing, forum marketing, and social media marketing.
“What’s that?” you might ask, “Social Media Marketing?”
Social media marketing is a very powerful thing. Not enough internet marketers use this method either. Broadly defined, this method of marketing has everything to do with Web 2.0, which encapsulates many of the newer forms of marketing.
Social networks and sites are communities of people, like “Facebook,” “Twitter,” or MySpace.” These are very large communities that have communities within communities. These satellite communities within the larger one are made up of like-minded people who share the same interests or activities There are many groups of different social types that people can join and become a part of, within these broad social networks.
The main point to pay attention to regarding marketing is that the traffic to these social sites is staggering! Millions of people visit these social sites every day. Joining even one of these social sites and working it to generate traffic could grow anyone’s online business immensely.
Social media marketing is free. Your only investment is your time, making friends and contacts. Another monumental consideration is that all the major search engines are in love with social networking sites. Because of this, search engines like Google will index these social sites several times a day. Depending on the content you post within one of these social sites, links to your business site will help you gain broader exposure and possibly higher search engine rankings.
Usually everything has a downside and the downside for marketers is that many of these social sites don’t like blatant marketing. When you think about this for a moment, it makes a lot of sense. No one really wants to live in an online community that’s filled with nothing but ad links screaming “buy me!”
If you join a social site, like “Facebook”, move right in and start contacting people to generate traffic for your business; could get you banned. Also, you won’t really generate any traffic from anyone. Subtlety will go a long way, within social networks. The real irony is that there are more than a few internet marketers who use these social networks as their main platforms to generate traffic and sales.
Here are some tips for marketing social media.
1. After joining a social site, immediately set up your full profile. Personalize your profile as much as you can. Include a recent photo of yourself and don’t be afraid to share information in your bio. The people who will provide you with resources will want to know about your likes and dislikes along with your interests like hobbies etc. The more personalized your information is, the more people will trust you.
2. Join as many of the different groups that will help your business grow. These social networking sites have more groups than you can imagine! Join some of these groups and take action within them. Leave useful posts, videos and links. Add members to your friends list. Over time, you will grow within these communities.
3. Adding useful new content on a regular basis is a lot like growing a blog. People will start to take notice of you. Over time, you will go viral and this is a good thing. Keeping your profile and pages fresh and alive encourages others to visit you and want to be on your active friends list.
4. Start your own group. Become that significant social animal. Be that expert in the field your business is in. It is more than important for you to be that person that others go to, in search of information that surrounds what you market. This will be how you become “viral” and explode your business.
As an expert, you are really only promoting yourself. When others look to you for information about what you do, then trust has been established. People love to buy from those they trust!
Some things to consider:
Be open and honest with everyone about who you are and what you do. His whole drive is to establish trust.
Do not spam or engage in any “flaming”. Spamming is blatant overkill and will turn everyone off. To engage in a “flame” war is to personally attack someone’s character. Don’t even think about this. If someone flames you, remember that “Silence is golden”. Do not respond to insults by firing back at anyone.
Honestly, if you follow even half of this advice, you will grow your business using social media. He is a natural winner. Just be yourself and market your business, marketing yourself in your social groups, etc.