Posts Tagged ‘socialmedia’

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.

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.

If you’re like me, I got really tired of paying for my traffic and striving to get a higher search engine ranking. The competition is getting tougher and tougher. Although I am getting more successful with my Google and Yahoo Marketing campaigns and that’s mainly because I’m getting more experienced at it. But believe me, I’ve wasted a lot of money going through the learning curve.

But I’ve gotten smarter! I’ve found a way to generate a lot more traffic to my website and it’s absolutely free! Yes, I’m going to continue using my adwords, but not as much as I have in the past.

How did I get smarter? I kept hearing how social media was going to be the wave of the future when it comes to internet marketing. So I started setting up a couple of accounts on sites like Facebook, MySpace, UTube and Twitter. Started asking people to be my friends and guess what started to happen. You guessed it! I started getting a lot more traffic to my blog and websites, best of all, it’s free traffic. I don’t have to work at getting ranking anymore. The back links from my media sites helps me to rank even higher in the search engines than I did when I worked at it.

If you use social marketing correctly, it will drive big traffic DIRECTLY to your site from the social media sites that you get involved with…and that’s huge. After all, that is really the holy grail, isn’t it?

We all want more traffic to our site, right?

You may not realize it, but social media sites have more traffic than Google. And if you use the right strategies and tactics to put yourself in front of that traffic, then you don’t have rely on Google to get traffic to your sites. And best of all, you don’t have to worry about expensive AdWords campaigns or other forms of advertising.

Of course, let’s be real here… just because you start getting big traffic directly from the social media sites doesn’t mean you will abandon your Google rankings and stop all advertising. What it means is that you will be getting a lot more traffic, and the average cost of that traffic will plummet down to levels that are from the stone ages when it comes to the internet…. that’s what I call “back to the future”!

With more and more people coming to the internet marketing, practices have changed over the last couple of years. Many businesses are now taking advantage of the new trends and are using social marketing to promote their businesses. There are many different ways that you can do this.

Web2 has a whole set of tools that you can use for social marketing. MySpace is just one of them.

Using sites like MySpace: This site will allow you to have a page and make contacts, you should not blatantly advertise here. You will be able to build up business relationships here, with your contacts. It also allows you to put in a classified ad for your business in a special section. You can attract a general audience from this form of promotion. It does not work well for niche markets and you will have to be very careful for network marketing opportunities.

Using video sites like Flicker and UTube: using videos to advertise your products is a relatively new concept. Even Google has made video an option for searches. This will work well for products. You will attract a fairly general audience with this form of marketing. You can make it more targeted by linking it to your blog “Seeing is believing” and if you use a good quality video, you can indeed sell products in this way.

Forums and business networks:

Forums and business networks are very useful and fun places to use for promotions. You cannot advertise at these places, but you can use your little signature file at the bottom of every post. Do not involve yourself in lengthy, time consuming discussions. Remember to post valid questions and useful answers. You will become known as an expert in your field and people from the forum will come to your website to check out what you have. They will also join your newsletter.

You can sometimes submit small articles to some business networks and start discussions or threads like this. It is a good away to sell yourself if you have a service. Always choose forums and business networks that target your particular niche.

Blogging: Blogging is an enjoyable way to promote your business. This is a web log or small daily diary. You will need to blog everyday for this to be affective. Remember to always target your particular niche. Make a special link for each blog that will lead back to your site. This can link back to an article or a special product- preferably a new one. Remember not to ramble and keep it concise. Submit your blog to all the blogging search engines. Over time, you will build a good clientele and bring good quality traffic to your site. You can also gain subscribers to your newsletter this way. Blogging can gain you valuable back links which will help you to get a better search engine position.

Social marketing is a fun way to promote your business and very cost effective. In fact, many of these methods are free. Many marketers have built their empires using social marketing. It’s worth spending a little time everyday to practice this fun form of marketing.