Social Networking Marketing
The “new” way to build relationships with your customers and profit from it
Is social networking marketing all it's cracked up to be? Is it glorified waste of time? Can you REALLY make money with social media?
If you’re a business owner, you've probably heard of this term many times.
You might have come across the concept under slightly different names too … so you might have heard someone mention social media marketing, or social media optimization (now that sounds complicated doesn’t it?) or simply social media.
Don’t worry. These terms all mean roughly the same thing.
So what is social media? And more importantly, what is social media marketing?
Perhaps the simplest definition of social media would be that this type of media encapsulates all online platforms that help people connect, communicate and interact with each other.
So you have social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube having billions of users worldwide interacting daily with other people who have their same interests.
Wow, billions of users! Impressive, but what does that have to do with your business?
Simple. In business, you’ve got to be where your customers are.
And if billions of people are on Facebook for a few hours each and every day, then you better be sure that you have some sort of presence on Facebook.
You may think that this whole social networking marketing thing is just a passing fad that only teenagers or young people engage in. Well it might have been somewhat true in the past, but official statistics now, definitely indicate otherwise.
Let me ask you a question.
Let’s say that you sold donuts. If you knew that there’s this “place” where a community of donut lovers meets daily to interact and rave about donuts, wouldn’t you want to be part of that community? You bet!
Well it’s no different with social marketing. And it’s not as hard as you might think either!
This is all well and good, but (there's always a "but", isn't there?) if you’re not knowledgeable about social media enough, then your social networking marketing efforts may end up being a waste of time.
In order to be successful with this type of marketing, you have to know both the medium (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc) AND your customers' behavior on that particular medium.
As with anything in business, you must have a concrete plan and a solid strategy of how you’re going to execute that plan.
Getting Started With Social Networking Marketing
If you're currently thinking of jumping on the Social Media bandwagon, then you need a plan. Period.
Perhaps you've been using Social Media for a while now and you're not seeing the results that you were expecting ... chances are that you left some important elements out of your plan.
Whatever the case, have a look at my 7-Step Social Media Business Plan to get a clear understanding of the things that you need to look out for when you're engaging in Social Media for business.
Free Up Your Time!
No doubt social media marketing is time consuming!
Luckily, there are many social media tools that can help you schedule your content and monitor and track your performance accordingly.
Here's a list of my Top 5 Favorite Social Media Tools!
Best things about these tools? They're all FREE!
Facebook is great platform for making big announcements, such as the launch of an ebook, training product, new service, etc.
If you don't have a Facebook Fan Page yet and would like some guidelines on how to create one, go to my step-by-step tutorial on how to create a Facebook Fan Page here.
For many small business owners, Facebook is a constant struggle.
Click here to discover this nifty little trick I use to get more sales on Facebook.
A lot of small business owners get confused as to why Twitter gets all the hype it gets and whether it's important to be on Twitter for business.
Many do not really know how Twitter works. If you're new to Twitter, I've created a basic Twitter guide especially for you. Click here to learn how Twitter works!
In future, I will be adding a whole lot more articles to this section. For example, it's all well and good having hundreds (and thousands) of fans and followers but how do you engage these fans? And the million dollar question, how do you actually make money from Social Media?
Sign up for my free updates below if you'd like to find out.
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