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The social network is a business owners dream. It is a place where many people congregate and exchange ideas, or just chat.
At any given moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people utilizing some of the most popular websites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
For example, the website Facebook has a registered 200,000,000 unique members on their websites. These are some of the most popular websites, and nearly every key demographic is represented, regardless of the product or service being distributed.
Small Businesses can genuinely make a lot of money advertising with these websites, even if not directly. It is advisable that a person becomes familiar with these websites, as they can really generate traffic to any website.
The social network is a central hub for business, and since everyone is a potential consumer, it is easy to see why the social network is a place where a lot of capital can be created.
Outlined below is how you as a business owner, Internet Marketer, or small business can capitalize on the opportunity to gain new customers through social networking.
Step-by-Step Action Plan
- The first thing that you want to do is setup a profile page for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. These are the largest social networking sites and you want to spend most of your marketing efforts with these because they receive the most traffic and have the largest reach across all industries. When setting up your profiles, you want to include as much information about yourself or company because your number one objective is to develop a brand and following when using these networks. We recommend that you include your contact information on your profile so it is as easily as possible for potential customers are able to contact you. You also want to make sure that you provide as much information as possible about yourself of company.
- Now that you have your profile page setup, it is now time to start adding friends or contacts for your accounts. How you want to go about doing this is using the search feature on each respective site and searching for contacts on the basis of keywords, location, industry, or whatever else you feel is related to you or your company. Add friends naturally in each network and make sure you add only people you know or friends of people you know.
- Now that you have some contacts within your network, it is now time to join some related groups. Twitter does not have this feature of joining groups, so don’t worry about it for that, but the others do. Join 5 groups that are related to your industry or demographic. This should be done about every other day as well until you are apart of about 25 groups.
- Next step is to add value to the groups that you just joined. You want to answer questions, provide useful content, and build relationships with some of the members that belong to the groups. By doing this will not only add value to the group, but also it will help to build upon your credibility and brand you as an authority figure. This is very important to understand because most people just try to advertise on the social networking sites without adding any value. Trust us, if you do this, it will soon tarnish you or your company and possible ruin your overall reputation.
- Now that you have added friends you know and added groups, it is now time to create your own group. This group will be the basis of providing information about yourself or company, updates, special product offers, content, and any else thing else that is going on with your company. The best way to build a group with a lot of members in it is to provide quality information and also let the contacts and groups that you have joined know about your new group. One last feature that many people don’t know about yet, is adding an opt-in form to your group and capturing your group membership information to follow up with them or send them your company newsletter.
- Once again, consistency is the key to the game. It is important that you keep fresh and updated content on your profile page and also in your group. You also want to make sure that you respond to all of your messages that you receive. It is a strong possibility that you will gain new customers just by responding to their messages. By following these steps, you will begin to build your company brand and build a following. This is a huge part of social proofing your business online.
Demographics
Conversion Rate
This data is not accessible due to the complex features of the social networks. There are so many different dimensions of the networks where you can grab new leads or customers for your business, so the conversions will be variable based upon the methods used to capture them.
Resources
Top Followed – Helps you grow larger, more diverse, and more valuable twitter network
Top Linked – Is the secret to building a larger, more diverse, and more valuable network on LinkedIn
Cost
There is no cost associated with social media marketing.
Top 5 Social Networking Sites
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Some very good points spelled out here on the beginning steps of building an on-line presence. Thanks again Donny,
Val
It just makes too much sense not to get in the game here with Social Media.
You have the layout for anyone with a need to know, the research is right on
these pages!
Appreciate all the work Donny
There is an important point to note: Advertising in social media, like Facebook, brings less ROI than with Google, say. Why? Because people use Google to search for something – and that is what you can sell to. People don't use social media much to look for something. So, they may be interested in cooking – but it doesn't follow that they want to buy your pots and pans right then.
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