Who hasn’t heard of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, eHow, blogs and forums? The power of these social media platforms has been realized by companies, traditional news media, and individual marketers.
Internet marketers who don’t want to be left behind should have Web 2.0 strategies as part of their whole marketing push, and understanding how to use this platform properly could influence their bottom line dramatically.
With social marketing, people openly discuss products and services they have used or are interested in – and they are quick to condemn, slow to praise. And it’s no secret that your competitors could be lurking in forums quietly feeding negative comments about your products.
For those who have not yet embraced social media marketing – on sites such as ViralNetworks, YouTube, Facebook, Warrior Forum, MySpace, Twitter, and eHow, here are a few tips on its use:
- Get educated: Understand what different platforms are out there, and see if there is one that is devoted to your niche.
- Think strategically: Only target social media sites that are frequently used by your target audience. Don’t spend time on cat sites if you are selling a ‘how-to’ guide to making websites.
- Get involved. You must give and take in social sites. Don’t pack your posts with sales links – you will be banned or ignored. Provide quality information in your poses, and where allowed, and a subtle website link in your signature. Join in conversations – don’t just write posts and forget them. See what others are talking about, and contribute. Valuable posts will be bookmarked and shared.
- On your own blogs and static sites, make sure you have bookmark buttons – help your content to travel.
- Search engines love multimedia, so use videos and podcasts as part of your Web 2.0 strategies. If you find someone asking a ‘how to’ question in a forum, reply with a video of exactly ‘how to’. Interviews are great to podcast, so why not have someone interview you about some new ‘technique’ you’ve developed?
- As with all internet marketing strategies, measuring and monitoring is important with social media marketing too. You should be aware of how many people are reading your posts, becoming your ‘friends’ or ‘followers’, and whether comments on your products and services are negative or positive.
Social media marketing gives you the ability to convert visitors to fans to customers, and you need to allocate a certain time every day for social networking at your chosen sites. It could be as little as half an hour, but if done well, could grow your prospect and client base considerably.
If you are in Internet Marketing or any form of online business, ViralNetworks is a Business Social Network and as such is well targeted to your products and services. Follow the rules above, add value, make and share videos and watch your friends convert to fans and fans convert to buyers. If you haven’t yet, join and start networking with me today on ViralNetworks!
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
Thank you for sharing such insightful information. These are good tips to keep in mind. pls keep them coming!
My friend who I haven’t seen in over 20 years found me on Facebook, and the first thing I got from him was a link to check out his MLM business…