Keep your friends close and your competition closer

Aside from gaining an insight into your competition, LinkedIn  also gives a way to browse company pages and be informed about potential hires. It is more or less 150,000 companies have their profile in LinkedIn which is the “public profile” for companies. Recent hires, movers, shakers, and company’s key stats are found on this page. In business, being updated and being connected is an advantage.

Win new business by answering questions and using advance search or LinkedIn, porential customersfor your business can be found. This is another opportunity to win new business or at least find prospective clients. Your answer to a question that has been asked will be posted and soon to be found when others search and use LinkedIn. What you have in your area of expertise will be your edge.

Acquire new customers through online recommendations and word of mouth.

  It is very effective to advertise through third party recommendations. By asking your happy clients to write you a recommendation, which is then published on your LinkedIn profile, has a far bigger impact to other customer than any form of paid advertising since a recommendation is social proof of someone who had already experienced the quality of your service or products. LinkedIn then informs everyone in your network of a new recommendation and it can be seen by anyone who visits your LinkedIn profile.

Build your industry network—online and in person

Finding an industry events that your prospective clients are attending could be another way of discovering targeted prospects. Through searching in theLinkedIn’s Groups category, it is  possible to find industry associations and networks tthat you can join and contribute to. You can also learn about events that your connections are attending , and if appropriate attend the event yourself, knowing that there is a great opportunity to connect with potential clients. An example for this is in an event planning or wedding industry, there are over 530 groups. It can be really helpful that you are able to find  industry events that your prospective clients are attending, by connecting with them first in an industry related group

How do you establish personal relationships in Twitter? Of course, you do not want to sound boring and sales pitchy at once.  Reach out to a potential client who is interested to take time to check your Twitter profile and read your tweets. Reach out by sending direct messages to this person who has the hopes of learning something of interest.  Saturate social media circle with helpful information about your business with the hope of generating sales.

So you begin to gain followers. Send them a line or two and thank them for following you. Do this by using direct messaging feature. Commonly called as DM, or direct message, it is Twitter’s private message service. If you send a DM, only the recipient can read the message.

It is possible to automate your ””Welcome, Thank you for following me”  DM. This is done outside Twitter that allows you to automatically follow people who are following you. It will also allow you to automatically send a DM to anyone who starts to follow you. Sounds like a good and easier idea, isn’t it? So, if you are marketing yourself or your product line, why not automate things?

Well, this marketing technique is good. However, it can be a boon or a bane. The advantage with an automatic direct messaging is that you can reach a potential customer anytime. But the biggest disadvantage is that you can be perceived as spam and your message ignored and deleted.

Ideally, the best thing to do is to sit in front of your computer and personally respond to your DMs.  This may consume so much of your time especially if you have  many followers everyday. Well, take time to check out their profile and send them a DM by saying something about their interests, location, or how your product can be of use to them.

Invest your precious time in networking. Well, if time is of the essence, you can opt to automate your DM with a personalized message. Do not sell them your products at once. Rather, say something like “Hello. Thanks for the follow…” and so on and so forth.  Make it sound like a smart automated DM. Address the person with their first name or mention where they are located, or perhaps how many followers they have gained. Persuade them with your words to let them read your posts, or buy products.

So, what is your option? To automate direct messaging or not?

Social Network Marketing is said to be an effective way to prospect and promote. It has been used for years and proves to yield positive results. However, you do not join a social network just for the main purpose of selling your products. You do not want to give a negative impression towards yourself. You do not want to stain your publicity because of sounding too sales-pitchy.  But instead, create a signature so people can remember you.  Share pockets of wisdom and get yourself known in that way. It is about helping others. The key is to give information and extend help rather than take. Develop your credibility by showing your expertise in order to drive your fans or followers to your business site. Once you establish who your prospect customers are, it is ethical to promote and market your business interest.

Mainly, it is all about targeting and offering the right product to the right market. Marketing your business through a social network provides awareness on the latest buzz you are into. Clue the readers in to the juicy tidbits about your business. Be a valuable part in conversations. Participate and communicate.

Unlike the traditional way of advertising, social network marketing is by far the cheapest form of advertising. It works with the power of ‘word of mouth’ not only in your locale but around the world. Try it to see how amazing it is!

In this day and age, customers are now looking for you online. Today we have local map listings, as well as Internet yellow pages (IYPs). Local search marketing is believed to increases your business online exposure and drive qualified traffic to increase your sales or leads.

How can you do this?  Foremost, get a website. Your website will contain all the needed information about your business. It gives your prospective customers a grasp of rich content beyond standard contact information. So, instead of spending your money in traditional advertising, cash it out for a website. It’s friendly on your pocket than traditional advertising. To mention the perks: one, your website is accessible for a longer period of time; two, the content can be changed without having to ask someone to do it for you and reach a wider audience. Thirdly, the big plus to having a website is it promotes communication between your business and your customers and potential customers. This gives you a feedback on how customers respond to your products, whether good or bad.

With a website, you can now enlist your address to a search engine. Check your business directory online and submit your web address on to their site. Be seen and be read. If you have a flower shop, you can put your business name to a local Google map. These search engine tactics will make your business name appear in the local search results online every time a person within your community will query for flower shops around your city. Google map will show your business name, location, and perhaps a sketch map.

A final tip into improving your local search marketing is to take advantage of the two giant social network sites. Face book and Twitter can be of help in propelling your budding business through the power of word-of-mouth.

Put your business in the economic map as you reap the rewards of your marketing strategy. Market online now.

In this article we are going to talk about ways that you can use Facebook to promote your business using free methods. There are also paid advertising opportunities available on Facebook also in the form of Pay per Click advertising. Paid advertising will be the subject of another post.

Bear in mind that Facebook is used by teenagers, young adults, and adults alike.  Therefore, you can be assured that your business would be exposed to all kinds of consumers.  What’s more favourable with the site is that you’ll get to promote the business with lesser cost in an effective manner.

If active users spend their time logged on to Facebook for at least an hour everyday, the percentage of your products’ exposure to them is quite high.  But how would you make this happen when most users’ tastes are discriminating?  Here are some helpful tips for you to get started with promoting your business via Facebook.

Sign up.

There are two types of pages in Facebook.  The regular Facebook pages for the common users and the Facebook Fanpages for businesses.  Your account would be for a Facebook Fanpage.  The pages should contain the necessary information about company and your products.  If you’re offering services for example, post your contact numbers or email address, links to your website, and the list of charges to each service.  Relevant information are a must, so make sure that you complete your pages with the important things that customers want to know about you and your products or services.

Keep pages interesting.

This is where you should really concentrate.  If the pages are updated and persuasive, readers/users will be visiting often.  The “Wall”, which is the first page, should contain photos, videos and vital information about the products and services you’re offering.

Endorse your Facebook Fanpage.

Let your customers or your “fans” know that you have a Facebook Fanpage.  You may want to show the Fanpage’s icon on your website to let customers know that they can come and visit your account.

It really is quite easy to start marketing using Facebook.  Now, you can relax a little and see if there are reasonable changes in the number of your customers.

Many businesses have been focusing their marketing efforts more towards Facebook in recent months. Here are some reasons why your business should seriously look at marketing through Facebook.

1. Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world.

Facebook now has an estimated 500 million users and is growing everyday. Within six months the average time a user spends on Facebook has increased from 19 minutes to 55 minutes.

How long does visitors stay at your business website?

2. Facebook has significantly penetrated into Canada, the UK, and the USA

By dividing the population of each of these countries with the number of Facebook users in that country we can discover the amount of penetration Facebook has. ( Data from ShinyShiny and Website Monitoring)

Canada has the highest penetration of Facebook with 40% of the population being Facebook users. The UK comes in next at 38% and the US, who of course has the highest population among these three, has 36%. It’s not really surprising that Canada ranks so high because 84.3% of Canadians are connected to Internet.

3. Facebook allows Commercial intent

Under Facebook’s terms and conditions a Facebook fan page can be used for commercial purposes. With 200 million people using Facebook every single day and staying for almost an hour it certainly makes sense for business to have a presence on Facebook and to build connections with the target market. When a business attracts a fan to join its fan page, that business has the ability to communicate directly with that person, build relationship and encourage community. Special offers can be promoted, events, and fans can opt in to your business mailing list all from a Facebook page. There are 1.5 million businesses taking advantage of this opportunity, with 700,000 being local businesses.

4. The average Facebook user joins to Facebook two fan pages a month.

There are other features on the Facebook site that are advantageous to use for business marketing and customer generating purposes.

5.Paid advertising

Businesses can use pay per click advertising on Facebook. The ads appear on the right-hand side of a users Facebook screen. Facebook, because of its user profile system, is able to target advertisements demographically which is very powerful.

6.Facebook Connect

Facebook connect is a program in which enables integration of Facebook with other sites. There are 80,000 other sites that can be connected through Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect means that online users can interact with Facebook without actually visiting the Facebook site.

7. Facebook Fan Box

This feature is enabled through Facebook Connect. By setting up a Facebook fan box, visitors to your website, newsletter, or YouTube can become a fan of your business page without actually visiting Facebook. This has proved to be a very effective way for business to gain more fans via their website, videos, and newsletters.

Facebook may not be the ideal social media site for your business, but because of the large number of users and Facebook’s features it is certainly worthwhile to consider Facebook as part of your marketing strategy. Facebook can be effectively used to  enable a business to keep connected with customers, generate warm leads, build brand exposure, and direct fans into its sales funnel.

Facebook has micro businesses all the way up to Fortune 500 companies using it as a marketing medium. Social media marketing is attractive to business because it is relatively inexpensive in comparison to more traditional forms of marketing, and can access many more prospects.

Is your business taking advantage of social media marketing?

How important is it to your social media efforts? What advice do you have for creating content and managing Facebook fan pages? Please comment below.

Build relationships.

The reason that these social media tools are popular is because they try to have long-lost friends find each other, form friendship with strangers and connect with families and friends who are separated geographically. These are what you should bear in mind.  To pave the way in marketing your business, you should start with constructing lasting relationships.

When you tweet, make it relevant and informative.  Do not include all features of your products into one update though, neither should you talk about them all the time.  Not only are you defying the laws of microblogging, you’re also exposing yourself to the danger of losing the people who follow you.  Keep it simple and friendly.  You’re in Twitter to gain customers who should be treated as friends.

Keep asking.

Asking questions give the impression that you care. It will also encourage your followers to communicate with you. Choose the right questions to post and you will find out that a lot of them are eager to answer.  With subtlety, include questions pertaining to your business.  Try to sound interesting and entertaining and you will definitely catch the attention of your followers.

You may take a survey through Twitter.  In this way, you’ll get to know what makes your followers happy or what catches their attention.

Update, update, update.

Post events in your company or affairs near your business establishment. Encourage people to go visit the affair.  Sharing the information with the rest of your links will make them think that you’re not just doing it for your business alone but for the whole community.

Special offers to Twitter Users.

You may conduct it once a month just for your Twitter followers.  This will let you find out if your marketing strategy through Twitter has worked.  It will answer your question on how many people you’ve coaxed to buy your products.  You may give discounts to Twitter users and if the number of people who claim the discount are increasing, it means that your marketing is a success.

Marketing with Twitter is relatively easy.  All you need to do is remember all of the above and you’ll see yourself looking forward to log in to your account as well.

Different social media strategies are present nowadays. The most used techniques involve the use of social networking sites and blogs. However, it will be an advantage for your business if you can utilize something that is unique or rarely used. If people can see that you can produce something new on your advertisements then it is most likely that they will believe in your capability to produce innovative products or services.

There are only few businesses that use an online suggestion box.  What other people miss is that this feature is so important especially if you want to hear feedbacks from your customers. You can embed it into your blogs and start receiving different ideas from different people. Of course your blog entries can receive comments, but a suggestion box will allow you to read reactions and responses in general.

When using social media, make sure that you always have something that your customers should anticipate or look out for. If you will be conducting a huge sale then make ads about it. Reserve a portion of your blog for it or you can create videos about it. If you offer discounts on certain products then you can tweet it on your Twitter or make it as your status in Facebook.

If you can afford to have some applications present on your blogs then you should also try it. As much as possible make or design the applications in a way that it symbolizes or includes components of your business. If your business is a restaurant then try some dining or food game. If you have a shop for car parts then try some racing games. There are even free games that you can download but this will prevent you from making them personalized.

These applications may come in a form of puzzles, games or anything that a visitor will enjoy using. The purpose of this is not merely to entertain them, but also to leave something in their mind that they will eventually remember on the following days. If they remember the game then there is a great possibility that they will remember your business also. There will be a huge tendency now that they will be coming back into your blog to check if what is now happening on your business or if there are something new.

There is always an associated risk in trying new things or strategies. But if it succeeds then you can gain a huge advantage over your competitors. It is a fact that if you want your business to grow then you should know how to take risks.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are just examples of places where people can communicate to friends, families and colleagues.  They post their pictures, opinions and beliefs in any available subject they can think of (i.e. sports, politics, fashion, brands) and then discuss about it for others to see.  If you want to join in the discussion then you have to invite yourself in by requesting to be added as a “friend”.
The word of mouth referral nature of social media means that social media should be an essential and integral part of any business marketing plan .  If a friend, for example, likes a certain product, she may post something about it which will be seen by everybody in her network.  The product will be talked about, even tried, by her friends.  It’s a very simple marketing idea.

For business people like you however, setting up an account on Twitter or Facebook is not  all it takes to ensure success in promoting your business line. Spending time participating in social media is important, but  time consuming. So as an entrepreneurs or business owners whose time is precious, it is important to have a marketing strategy, and to determine how much time you can spend, and what you need to delegate to a staff member, or outsource.

Here are some things to consider when planning your social media marketing strategy:

• Which social media sites do your target market frequent?
• How will you move the contacts and relationships made on social media into your sales funnel?
• what type of information and content will you put on fan pages, tweet about etc
• How will you respond to comments and interactions?

When we work with our clients, these are the type of things we establish first, so that a strategy can be created that meets the goals and outcomes of the individual business. There is no cookie cutter solution as every business is unique.

It will be important for you have to know how these sites work and basically, what they do in forming relationships.  This is your starting point.

Market your products with sensitivity.  Remember, this is all about relationships.  It’s not just about you selling your products, it’s about how your followers trust you to talk about their opinions and beliefs.  During one of these conversations, you can slip in a little about business.  It’s in the way you drive the discussion to your goal.

You can keep track of your products’ reputation through social media, and your duty is to keep up with the changes of time and thrive on the positive response that your followers have given.  Improvement is important.  Improve your posts, your products (if needed), and continue to listen.  Don’t let your social media pages be boring or you’ll end up losing the friends/followers you’ve accumulated. Instead, set up events for them or invite them to your company’s promotional affairs.  This will make your fan base stronger.  It’s a sure win-win situation and you’ll see how social media has  impacted upon your business.

You can create a Fan Page for your business. In here, you can post relevant information and other pertinent details about your business. You can raise discussions and hear other people’s thoughts about your business. Quick feedback will be given to you each time so make sure that you can respond quickly also.

If you are using Facebook, it is important that you update your profile as often as you can. When other users see that you have at least a post per day then they will think that your profile is active. Ask other users on their thoughts about your business and operations. Ask if they have comments or suggestions then act accordingly. This is a very good way of communicating with them and hearing their requests.

Post some multimedia on your profile. If your business is a restaurant then upload pictures of your customers as they dine in your facility. Post some photos of the food that they can expect. This will encourage them more to visit your establishment!

You can also upload some advertisements through videos. It is free so the cost will just be on the creation of that video. Let other people see it and if the video is effective enough then you will acquire new customers. If your video is well done or entertaining people will share the video on their Facebook wall, and in this way your video is exposed to a wider audience creating greater exposure for your business.

Another feature that Facebook offers is that you can create an event and invite people to join it. You will enter the basic information about this event then ask people if they can attend or not. There is a function there that will let the  users choose if they will be going to attend or miss it. By this you will get an idea and estimate on how many will be joining your event. You can add some promotional lures also by offering some discounts or freebies.

Using Facebook as a social media tool means that you need to be sociable to your fans and other users. As much as possible interact with them so that they will be comfortable with you and your business. Chat with other users in a way that it will appear as a normal conversation. Remember people like to do business with people that they know , like and trust. When you have established a relationship with your potential customers they will do business with you rather than a business that they know nothing about – and they will refer your business to their friends!