Social Networking & Business Expansion
Expanding social media and the importance of your presence can be overwhelming at the best of times. Most sales and marketing articles these days will tell you to take advantage of social networking sites in order to expand your business. While this advice is great, an important question is how can you use social networking websites to your advantage? The answer lies in understanding social networking etiquette. And is something I personally continue to revisit and refine my own approaches. Both as an individual in business and for my overall business.
We all know social networking websites are an excellent way to make new contacts and keep in touch with old ones. However, most people tend get put off if you use the medium to blatantly promote a product or service. A social networking marketing campaign therefore has to be carefully drafted, so that it doesn’t look like you are on the site only to serve your business interests. This becomes a fine balancing act and a business owner I need to know when enough is enough or when I need to push through. If you are uncertain where that fine line is for you and your business then consulting with a social networking expert is a great place to begin.
Communities
Joining communities that are in some way related to your business and staying active in them is a good way to build your online reputation. For instance, if you have a Life Coaching business, joining online communities related to spirituality, business education, holistic health, etc, would be a great idea and starting point.
When you initiate contact with someone on any social networking website, remember to keep in touch as well. In fact after adding someone to your contact list, you should first try to build a personal rapport with them, before you start sending them your business related information. This may become difficult is you are “friending” or “following” numerous people each and every day. Create a plan and stick to it.
Add interesting videos that are related to your business, but make sure they aren’t completely promotional. For instance, Life coaches can add a 2 minute instructional video related to a motivation or de-stressing exercise and leave a link to their website below the video. When you post unrelated or inappropriate content then your first impression is working against you. Before adding videos double check your resource to ensure that what you find supports your business brand as well as your business’s vision.
Share interesting quotes that are related to your business or you personally in order to build your brand value through social networking websites. For instance, if you are on twitter, you may use motivational quotes as your tweets but again keep the quote relative to your vision and what your target demographic is being drawn to for. If the quotes are off topic then the disconnection will leave your followers dazed and confused.
Overwhelming is an Understatement
All of the social networking can be overwhelming so an easy and very accessible tool for improving your efficiency is using the widgets supplied by most social networking websites and post them on your website and blog.
Not sure what else to share with your network? You can post messages about your seminars and workshop in your status update. Once your seminars are complete, be sure you post pictures of your seminars, workshops and events on your profile. People are go to the visual of what other’s experience is working with you.
You must have a presence on the right social networking websites, i.e. you must do your research and figure out whether or not the communities and social networking website you have joined have enough members of the geographical and demographic group you wish to target.
Though social networking based marketing campaigns do not require too much monetary investment, but you do need to put in a lot of time and effort in order to design a workable and effective campaign. Remember failing to plan is planning to fail – seek out the necessary support to create an effective plan and the right resources to successfully execute the plan.
Share in the SpringBoard group your expanding social media tips. We would love to hear and learn from you.
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