Posts Tagged ‘social networking’
The 5 Steps of Social Media Marketing
Entrepreneurs are using the newest internet trend, professional social networks. Services like LinkedIn, Konnects, Ecademy, Plaxo and even Facebook provide professionals the opportunity to meet and collaborate with colleagues worldwide. These professionals fall into two distinct groups who utilize social networks:
Those for whom the emphasis is on the word “network” Those for whom the emphasis is on the word “social”
Those who emphasize the word “network” seek to promote and expand their business. Those who emphasize the word “social” seek to promote and expand their Christmas card list. Social Media Marketing is the systematic approach to using social networks and other “Web 2.0″ and “Web 3.0″ technologies as a part of an all inclusive marketing plan.
“Begin with the End in Mind”
Steven Covey’s 5th7 Habits of Highly Effective People) is one of the truisms of planning regardless of the purpose of the plan. The rapidity with which the field of Social Media Marketing is changing, new sites debuting, new functions and innovations make any treatise listing specific services obsolete before it can even be printed. However, when the social networks are viewed as tools the emphasis shifts from recommending specific sites to defining goals.
Step One: Define the goals then matching the tool to the purpose.
Goals vary from business to business and professional to professional, but the identification of goals is key to determining what characteristics are needed in a social network. Further, once a social media marketing program begins to meet with success, a deluge of invitations to other networks will begin to arrive. A prioritized list of goals will ensure that the social media marketing plan does not suffer “mission creep” by pursuing unrelated social networking opportunities.
Boundaries, Budgets & Bull’s-Eyes
The rule of cellular operations is that leadership sets the boundaries and budgets and allows the team charged with achieving the goal to “hit the Bull’s-Eye” on their own by any means that respects the boundaries and budgets sets. This form of leadership is used in all manner of situations that require high achievement in a rapidly changing environment. Special Forces teams, SWAT teams, corporate crisis teams, even medical resuscitation teams and Emergency Medical Services operate in this micromanagement-free manner.
Step Two: Set boundaries and budgets that govern the efforts expended in social networking while allowing the social networker “hit the Bull’s-Eye.”
Most professional social networks offer a free and one or more “premium” memberships. In most or all of those with “premium” memberships, it is possible to “earn” free premium upgrades by recruiting new members to the network platform. With all these incentives, it is only necessary to spend money on professional social network membership if a specific paid premium membership function or service is needed to achieve the goals set in step 1. This does not however mean that social networking is free. Most successful business social networkers agree that success requires a minimum of 40 hours per month spent building the network and communicating with network members and online contacts. The biggest area of budget bloat is time spent networking online.
Be very critical of the time spent on social media marketing. Time has a definite value in real dollars and time spent on social media marketing must provide a real and measurable return on investment. It is all too easy to spend endless hours enjoying the many “features” of social networking sites. Whether answering posted questions and earning the tag “Expert” or racking up endorsements and testimonials, every minute spent online must have a purpose, must contribute to achieving the goals and must provide a return.
Create a Cult of Personality
Once the goals, budgets and boundaries are set, it is time to begin networking. Whether online or in person, the most important tool of the social networker is dialogue. Online networking must include direct and individual communications with every member of the network. This is the process that separates those using social networks to expand their business and those seeking only to expand their Christmas list.
Every time a new member joins the network, that new contact must receive a personalized email welcoming them to the network. This mandates that the new contact’s network profile be read and the contact’s interests made the focus of the email. The process of customizing the welcome to the new contact has a side benefit to the business because it forces the business to define its relevance to an ever expanding and ever deepening market demographic described by the social network developed online.
Step Three: Communicate and connect, don’t just collect.
The object of the entire social media marketing effort is to build a network with a personal bond and the ability to refer paying customers or become paying customers themselves. This means the network members must become raving fans even before they make a buy or refer decision. Those who have been networking in real life for years know this is much harder than turning a satisfied customer into a raving fan. Unlike in person networking, online networking limits the level of interpersonal exchange and thus “likability.” A social network makes the transition to raving fans because of the personality of the network leader. Use the regular communication with network members as a “personality conduit.”
It’s Called the “Web” for a Reason
The highest accolade for a business person using social networks as a professional tool is to become a “meta-leader.” Based on concepts taken from disaster healthcare and emergency management, the “meta-leader” is a bridge for communications across industries and a role modeling leader within their own business. In social networks, whether professional or personal, this is a truly pivotal role because as a “network node” the meta-leader is the point at which multiple individual networks begin to overlap. The meta-leader is the connection and the conduit for all these networks and even across social networking websites.
Step Four: Attract Like Minded People, Then Lead Them
The key to becoming a meta-leader in a market niche is to become a gathering point for other online professionals and their respective networks. All the professional social networking websites have the ability to create clubs, or groups, or collectives. By volunteering to create and manage such a group the meta-leader becomes the point of convergence for everyone interested in the topic.
Time to Get Real
Once the goals are set, the network built and the like minds have gathered, it is time to expand into the non-virtual world. The popular term for a social networking group meeting outside of cyberspace is “In Real Life” or simply “Live.” Virtually all local chapters of online professional social networks have a “Live” meeting. This is where meta-leadership changes a list of network members into life long business relationships.
Step Five: Make it Real in Real Life
Depending on the local culture and networking traditions as well as the subculture of the online network, a traditional “dinner and drinks” networking event may be in order, but a “picnic in the park” or a “burgers and baseball” format may be more appropriate. The key is not the surroundings, but the opportunity for people who have built an online, but nonetheless real relationship to put a handshake, or a hug, to the profile and prose.
Online professional social networks and social media marketing are the newest tool in the entrepreneur’s business success kit. Properly used, it promises business expansion and profit growth.
Country Wine
Social Marketing Basics
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Marketing is made up of many different aspects. The important thing to remember is that anyone wanting to earn money online should be prepared to invest the time and effort required to build a genuine business. Using social media should be just one part of your overall traffic-building strategy, not the entire nor the only strategy you incorporate.
I share 4 key components of social marketing below. Learning the basic principles of social marketing and how it works will go a long way in helping you with not only your marketing efforts, but your notoriety and reader retention.
Blogging is Crucial in Social Marketing
Your blog is naturally a social marketing tool. By using good posting strategies, linkbait, clip marks, utility posts, commenting, growing your audience, setting up social widgets, content exchanges or blog carnivals, and social media optimization you will have set a powerful base for your website. The building blocks of social marketing success are one of the critical components to making your online business not only visited more, but critical to your monetary success.
Using Social Sites Properly
Learning the common social site features will enable you to grasp how to use these communities to their highest potential. Creating a powerful profile is very important. Making friends on social sites is just one power networking strategy, along with having others submit respond to, and vote on your content. You also want to understand the rules for each social site so that you don’t get your account banned. Tagging is another critical aspect to your social marketing, and being able to measure your marketing results.
It’s a Conversation, Not a Sales Pitch
Starting conversations is a power strategy. Knowing the Golden Rules of Social Networking will enable you to get maximum views for your social networking, forum activity, and on how to find social networks in your niche. Learning Social Power Linking Strategies will enable you to drive organic traffic to your site, and will provide you with continuous streams of repeat visitors. People who are searching for information in your niche will find you because of the social marketing strategies. Social marketing does many things, it not only puts you in front of those who are in those specific social sites, but because you are creating links, regular followers will come simply because the search engines will notice all your efforts and all the organic traffic that you are creating. This in turn will help you with your search engine rankings.
A System Is Critical To Being Efficient
In order to incorporate these strategies you need a system, a guide, on how to do this effectively and a place where you can share your findings and questions with others. There are several communities where bloggers band together and where social marketing tactics of all kinds are shared and discussed in great detail.
Great free communities to get involved are MyBlogLog.com, BlogCatalog.com, and SocialAuthority.Ning.com. People interested in social marketing and better blogging tactics are working out new social marketing tactics and helping each other progress in busy communities such as these.
Country Wine
Social Networking: No Computer Required
Although it is typically described as interacting with virtual community members, social networking takes on new meaning when it becomes an offline approach.
Social marketing is certainly one of the buzzwords of the year. MySpace, Facebook, and a plethora of blog networks and discussion forums all fall under the umbrella of social networking. Although it is typically described as interacting with virtual community members, social marketing takes on new meaning when it becomes an offline approach.
The convenience and comfort of the online world has added much to business networking. However, is it possible that this virtual connection has also taken away from the benefits real-life face to face interaction offers?
Perhaps a healthy balance of online and offline networking is what it needed to take a business-even an online business-to the next level.
An Internet marketer can find numerous effective and interesting ways to connect with people offline. Keeping a stash of business cards to hand out to people you meet while out and about is one simple way to create interest and discussion about your business.
Every Internet marketer knows to always include signatures and links in e-mails, forum and blog postings in order to bring in business. The same techniques can be applied in the outside world by utilizing business cards or just your voice to bring your business and interests into conversation.
Getting involved in local business networking events is another effective way to enter offline social marketing. Attend chamber of commerce events, lunch and learns, or happy hours for professionals to get plugged into circles of people with whom you can swap business advice and learn more about what is going on in your area.
Nervous about leaving the security of your office chair and computer screen? If you have been able to be successful at online social marketing, you can succeed offline as well. Simply use the same social skills that have worked for you on forums and blogs: show a genuine interest in people, be friendly and thoughtful, and use honesty and integrity as you meet with people.
Internet marketing seminars are a great way to connect with people who have similar interests and goals. By using your people-skills, you can develop rewarding professional relationships that will benefit your business and perhaps even your social calendar. Furthermore, such seminars will provide you with information to build your business. You are basically doubling your money with this offline social networking option.
It’s all about avoiding the “stuck in a box” scenario. A true Internet marketer is always seeking out opportunities to connect with others, and the offline world provides many avenues for connection.
True, it may not be as easy or comfortable as an online forum. After all, in the real world we don’t walk around with our profiles, including hobbies, goals, and favorite movies, listed on our shirts, nor do we have our favorite song playing in the background. But by being honest and real and displaying genuine interest in others, you will find yourself succeeding in the offline world of social networking-no screen name required.
Ways You Can Use Twitter For Business
Let’s jump right in and talk about how you can use Twitter to conduct your market research. Every business has a target market, but the simple fact is that many business owners often miss the mark because they don’t know the true needs of their market.
By using Twitter, you can easily listen to the needs of your prospects, the issues they are currently facing and the kind of help that they want.
Whenever you meet someone new on Twitter it’s a good idea to try to establish a good relationship from the start. Think like your customer. You buy from people who you trust and like. Your target market also behaves the same way. It is important, especially in social marketing that you get to know your clients and do your best to win their trust and confidence.
A good rule of thumb is to try and keep 90% of your tweets full of helpful content and try to limit your promotional ones. By doing so, you can attract more followers and hopefully customers.
Share Your Expertise
In order to show off your expertise on Twitter you will want to post quality content on your blogs, website and other sites, like article directory EzineArticles.com. Then share them with your followers.
As we talked about in the last chapter, there are a wide variety of tools that work with Twitter that will automatically check the blogs you’ve posted and share them instantly on your page. Offering educational materials, seminars, video training and networking events will also go a long way when you are trying to convert your followers into paying customers.
If you’re not camera shy, plug in your webcam and use this great service that allows you to stream live video on your Twitter page and chat real time with your followers! This will be a fantastic way to make an instant connection for you and your peeps.
You can find out more here: http://twitcam.com
There are so many different techniques that you can use to help the transition from follower to customer by using Twitter. Just remember to keep the value of your content high and the volume of your promotions low and you will begin to see more of your followers clicking on your promo links and turning into customers.
Social Bookmarking And Power Linking
Just in case you missed it… the Web has changed.
I think a little history of the Internet is in order to grasp the big picture. Social networking began with the telephone and it’s proliferation into new media included the BBS. I ran a BBS (a computer people could connect to with dial-up) in the early 1980′s.
The Internet was much different than the Web is today. There was no graphics… it was totally text based and everything was dial up. All you could do was basically post to a newsgroup, post messages on some BBS’s and send email. Internet Marketing as we know it today did not exist.
In time though – a few brave souls ventured out of the shadows and began marketing within the newsgroups. This started wars between the “Purists” and new “Marketers” that I still remember to this day.
You see, the Purists considered the Internet to be their own little playground. They viewed anyone selling something as evil. After all… Marketers had the TV, the Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, etc, etc as an avenue in which to sell their crap. “The Internet is ours” was their battle cry.
They viewed the Internet as a way for them to communicate with each other without having to wade through all the BS advertising – and they could control what was being said. When the evil “Marketer” entered the picture, this all changed – and it changed quickly.
Once the evil Marketer had discovered the Internet as a new marketing medium, the “Purity” of the Internet, newsgroups and BBS’s was destroyed forever.
The Internet was now becoming just another medium for Marketers to sell their wares. It was inevitable and only a matter of time before this happened. But the Purists fought it tooth and nail.
The Newsgroups and BBS’s were now inundated and overrun with advertising. There was so much spam that you could hardly follow a thread or make sense of it. The thread may have started out discussing a subject as “Microsoft DOS” as it’s first post… but it was hard to make sense of it as the evil Marketers would post “off topic” spam ads trying to sell their wares throughout the threads.
As we all know things have changed a lot since those “Caveman” days… the evil Marketers persevered and the Purists lost the War (or did they?)
Jump to present day…
The Purists did not really lose – they just lost a battle ten or fifteen years ago, but they have recently won the War and staked their claim on the Internet as belonging to them with Web 2.0.
Just in case you missed this “coup d’ etat” – give some serious thought to the current environment on the Web and Social Networking specifically. The Web no longer belongs to the evil Marketer. It is back in the hands and control of the Purists and they are once again controlling the conversations.
I know… it sounds like a bunch of BS, but for the most part it is true.
The difference is the Purists have discovered a way to once again “control” the conversations they want to have, while at the same time make a profit from these discussions (i.e. social networking communities).
Welcome to Web 2.0 and Social Networking.
I do not consider myself a Internet “Purist”… I’d fall more into the “Evil Marketer” category. This being the case, like you (if you are an Evil Marketer too) I have to adapt and change the way I do things or I will soon fall to the wayside and die a slow death.
Like the saying goes, “When in Rome… do as The Romans Do” was never a truer statement than it is today.
The way you sell things and market has to change – you are now in Rome.
Marketing as we know it today on the Web is dying a slow death – but it is happening fast. Only those who adapt and change will survive.
The Web 2.0 Marketer will survive this “coup d’ etat”.
Interruption Marketing has lost out to Participation Marketing and the Web 2.0 Marketer will prosper with these changes. It is no longer about forcing our messages down the throats of people – they get enough of that with all the other advertising mediums. It is all about authority, conversations and participating within discussions that other people deem important – not what you feel is important.
Seth Godin has been telling us this very same thing for a few years now – but a lot have not listened.
Why is this? Because it takes work and discipline (and change) to make relationships and participate in meaningful conversations. It is easier to do what I would call “method of the day” or “hit and miss” marketing – at least in the short run. But that is all it is… marketing for the short haul with no regard to the direction the Web is moving.
Like Seth Godin, Jack Humphrey has been telling Marketers they need to adapt and change their marketing methods for years now with Social Power Linking. Jack saw this “coup d’ etat” coming before most and began joining in with the “conversations” while most of us were still doing our marketing basically the same way as the “evil Marketers” of past (and current) – cramming and forcing our message down our visitors throats.
I have posted before on Social Bookmarking and Social Networking and the success I have had with these methods. You can view other posts on this blog and see the results I have had by simply joining in and creating “conversations”.
This is not a fad or a “method of the day”… it is here to stay.
With the direction the Web is heading (we are really already there) – Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Conversation Participation with links from and pointing to those conversations is the key to being successful for the Web 2.0 Marketer.
So don’t rebel against the “coup d’ etat” – come on it, the water is fine.
An Easier Learning Curve Through Social Marketing Networks
Most people who have succeeded in business can probably tell you something about the importance of having a mentor who will be able to teach you the ropes in starting your own business. This is because the experience that these successful businessmen can impart is a very important factor in shortening your learning curve and in helping you avoid the mistakes start-up entrepreneurs usually make.
Consider the fact that 90 percent of all start-up businesses fail within five years as opposed to 90 percent of franchised businesses succeeding within the same time span and you’ll begin to appreciate the benefits of not having to reinvent the wheel to make your business work.
Social Marketing Networks
Online social marketing networks have served the purpose of educating new entrepreneurs as well as honing the skills of experienced entrepreneurs. This is because in an online social marketing network, you can ask for a business advice by posting your questions in a new forum and reading the answers given by some successful members. An article about the most common mistakes a newbie makes in any line of business alone can save you from making the same costly mistake. Furthermore, your learning curve will be much shorter as the other members in the network can help you find information, contacts and procedures that you need to start or manage your business.
Conversely, these successful businessmen can also generate leads and business opportunities through these online social marketing networks by providing the new entrepreneurs the tools they need to successfully jump start their business. All in all, social marketing networks benefit every member by making available information, means of sharing ideas, and ways of gathering information otherwise unavailable through other means.
Criteria in Choosing your Online Social Marketing Network
Of course, not all social marketing networks are the same so you must choose wisely. The best online social marketing network for you will obviously be the ones you will benefit from the most. For this reason, if you are a new entrepreneur, choosing the social marketing network with the most active and most numerous successful members will be the best choice. This is because the advice that they will be able to impart regarding your concerns will be ones based on something they have encountered before that has worked and not something they have only theorized about.
Of course, surrounding yourself with successful people in your field of business will also give you the right frame of mind and outlook in overcoming the challenges that will come your way. These people will tend to be supportive and not pessimistic because they themselves have learned to overcome these problems when they were starting out on their own.
Make sure to also choose a group that is well lead and structured as this will prove to be very important in making the transactions and conversations easier to participate in and more beneficial for the members. Beware of some social networks having very lax leadership; this defeats the purpose of creating the group in the first place with some members filling the forums with spams, advertisements, viruses etc. With social marketing networks, learn more, share more and profit more.