What Can Social Networking Do For You?
Build Your Brand and Develop Some Great Business Contacts
We live in a solution based world, trying to solve our own problems, or the problems of others. These are the goals of most businesses, and the best way to accomplish this goal is through a network. This is where Social Networking comes into play, or should I say, work. When you are using sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you have the ability to really reach out and make some great new business contacts.
As you get started, you will find that you spend more time and effort giving to the community than you are getting back. You will find it a bit challenging to keep your personal connections separate from your business connections.
There are three network sites that are great to begin with; Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These are the leaders when it comes to reaching across several interests.
For a more targeted market if you are in the online business niche, along with 2 partners my new site, ViralNetworks is in prelaunch and is about as targeted as you can get. (shameless self plug!)
Social Networking Advice
Take the time to create a warm and inviting profile, providing all the public information including your current employment to your job history. You want to portray yourself as someone who is thorough and complete in everything you do, and this includes your profile.
Don’t create big spam profiles just filled with links and imitating a Splog (Spam Blog) with a bad case of the runs, be sure to keep it decent sizes, accurate, well written and with correct grammar.
Be Reachable! Provide many ways for others to contact you. Some examples are your IM address, email address, Skype username, Twitter name, as well as a phone number. Create a number of keywords that associate with your niche product, and tie it all closely to your blog.
How Important Is Your Email Signature?
This is very important and will provide value in your networking efforts. In your email signature, include your contact information, links to your blog and LinkedIn profile, making it easier for those to find you.
(Shameless Plug Take Two:) ViralNetworks has a Signature File in your profile, you enter your text in there (make it compelling, make people want to click on it) and then it hyperlinks to your chosen site. This Sig is used on guestbook comments, on the forums, on video comments, so can lead to MASSIVE exposure. It is VERY important to write a compelling Signature, as you are not allowed links ‘in post’ with most sites, including ViralNetworks
If you have any profiles that are currently inactive, clean them up and make sure they are professional. Do a search for your name on Google, Zoominfo, and Spock and see what is out there, delete anything that is not proper or inactive.
From this moment forward, be careful as to what you post, including photos, blog posts, and articles. Anything that can be linked back to you, needs to be professional and easily seen. You will also be seen by subscribing to a site application such as FriendFeed.
You will find benefits of social networking through many of the services available. You will learn how is using these services, and invite them into your network.
Next, you will invite your contacts by email to join your social network, but be careful how you do this…you do not want to become a spammer.
Take advantage of the Social Networking sites, get your name and brand out there and build up your own network. If you want to follow me on Twitter, please click here.
Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!
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I'm an avid fan of your blog, and the content is always top notch - great reading. I'm always impressed with the variety of content and the way you get all the important steps outlined for processes, but still manage to keep it short and simple - few people do that quite as well.
Mike Purvis
Andy Fletcher
Todd Gross
It is true that nowadays social networking sites are the next marketing platform.
Yep I think it is.
BTW, how many times do you post on your blog, seems like 2-3 posts a day! I have joined your feed now 😉
Considering that there are now so many social networks catering to such a wide range of niches, my biggest problem is finding ones relevant to me and related to my specific interests or product niches. Google seems to be inefficient and returns alot of irrelevant results. A good resource that I use to find them is this search engine for social networks.
Yep marketing through twitter itself gets thousands of dollars for the Shopping site Woot.com, who features discount offers!
Went through the site you shared, it actually provided some results which were irrelevant and some social networks were there which were inactive since more than a month. So not worth using it.
Btw for anything, there’s google!
Good post Colin,
Actually of all those sites you showed in that graph picture, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn and Facebook seemed to be the best for me.
Could you please explain some thing about last.fm if you have used it already, as i have never tried it and don’t want to waste time if people suggest its not good.
Yeah Last.fm is basically a Social Network for the music industry like Talent agencies, bands, but also people wanting to find new music. I guess an Entrepreneur could use it for profit in some way, maybe get a band to make a theme song for their site free or cheap to get exposure, that kind of thing 🙂 (I might actually do that at some stage, lol)
Ive got a domain for that (I think i still have it) newtalent.fm – might make a social site like that at some stage.
Last.fm in fact is more a socail music portal i guess you could call it, rating music, things like that
Ah got it. Thanks for explaining.
Not for me then.. Am not much into this music stuff, at least online.
Hmm.. I’ll remember this post when I start to do some online marketting
up till now, I only blog about personal stuff .. he,he
Colin,
Love all the advice about these various sites… will get right on it. One thing I have learned is keeping all my info in one note book… then I never lose site of my usernames, passwords and general info relating to each site or community. Also have discovered that a schedule is key. I have devised a system where I can spend just half an our -or less and log in -post a comment and “work” my communities on a consistent basis. Still a little clueless on the Inviting people side of things in Twitter and even here so any advice would help to build my following!
Thanks!
Karen
Chetan, I agree Google is HUGE! I have found btw that submitting articles and press releases (I only post in the sites that are free to do so) will give you solo referals… as in no one else with the same first or last name will come up when someone Googles you… so you can obtain thousands and thousands of referrals and the spiders will only credit you personally to the Search Engines… If you would like to Google me you will see what I mean feel free… and the traffic that equates to is awesome!
Any way I hope that helps in some small way. If you have any traffic generating tips or ideas for me… I would love to hear back from you and best of luck in all you do!
Warm Regards!
Karen
PS I love your questions… they are helping me too so thanks again Chetan!
Colin,
Thanks for posting all the comments… bits of golden nuggets if you ask me!
Karen Giardunio
Marketers and advertisers are finding it hard to formulate a solid successful strategy on social networks. CPM rates are notoriously low on social media networks because they just don’t get the same rate of conversions in other venues. I do think that social networking is a part of the future of marketing, but it is not the be all and end all. I do think that successful social networking will also be more time consuming and more expensive when done correctly.
Allan,
I agree that CPM rates are low, but Social networking for us, the marketers, can be used as a very good ‘complimentary’ Tool that works alongside your ‘sales funnel’ so you dont do direct selling on Social networks, but rather use it to pull leads into your own sales funnel.
Colin,
Here’s a question for you… if someone has taken my article and posted it on a porn site or has a title to imply that basic genre – how do I inform Google (or whatever SE it is in) to request it’s removal… or I’m I just stuck with what happens to my material once it gets into the hands of others. As the original Author -do I have a right to say I feel it degrades my professional and personal character status on and off line and asked that it be removed and delete anything form that site or posting area in the future… this may sound silly -a reference is a reference and builds my ranking #s -but I feel it is an ethical issue. To each his own -but bottom line I feel it is not in line with my own way of doing things!
Karen
Hmm, to be honest im not too sure what you can do. Your best bet would be to contact the site where your content is being shown and ask them to please remove it and not add any content from you again on their site, this is about the only thing I can think of that might get it removed
Something like this would help Karen?
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html