Social Networking Tips for Businesses

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Social networking is gradually evolving, facilitated by the technological developments. This is clearly understood when we visit the websites of companies that have all facilities in place, right from the product knowledge to the promotions, from providing knowledge to collecting responses and suggestions. Besides the major activities like advertising and promotions, companies nowadays indulge in activities like sales promotion incentives on the internet; these companies offer coupons, contest and sweepstakes to spread their social networks.

Social networking allows interaction with professional in an informal way. It's the easiest way to reach hundreds at a time without any expenditure. The power of social networking cannot be underestimated. The best social networking tips for businesses are as follows:

1. Quitting traditional networking mode - The first of social networking tips for businesses is to quit traditional networking mode and use the latest technology. You can set up a blog in your company name and get the feedback of the customers. It helps the company to have access to the global marketplace and identify the target audience with minimal effort. It provides wider reach with personalized messages and two way interactions.

2. Using facebook for business - The second of social networking tips for businesses is to use facebook. Facebook is the recent growing social networking medium. It is being accessed by thousands of people for business networking. You can create a company page and keep on updating it. Make it a page where your fan would go and checkout the page. When it comes to business, face book has always been the first choice of any businessman.

3. Using twitter - The third of social networking tips for businesses is to use twitter. Twitter is a fast growing and powerful tool used for business. It helps to create direct contact with the potential customers and provides them with the quick updates. It acts as an advertising channel and is quite safe and handy.

4. Highlight your expertise on forum - The fourth social networking tips for businesses is to use forums. forums are best networks to advertise your USP. It should be interesting and voice something to create your credibility. Reasonable comments received in it are highly acknowledged and recommended as an expert's advice.

5. Privacy online - The fifth social networking tips for businesses is to use Privacy Online. The top professional sites helps you to provide and offer high privacy setting. Every detail is personalized and is safe here. However the information should be filtered carefully.

6. What is necessary to post and what is not - The last social networking tips for businesses is to understand that there should not be any personal comments about the product. Through the response you receive, it is essential to target the audience of personal interest.

Social networking is used as a weapon, and it creates such a powerful wave of positive feelings that even strongest competitors cannot stop customers from buying their products. It creates a corporate identity in the minds of the people about the product. There are many social networking tools like face book, twitter, privacy online etc which can be used. All these networking tools can help you to build a strong relationship between the customers and the intermediaries. It creates a corporate identity of a person and helps him to face the competitive advantage. Another factor that helps is sponsorship. It is a sort of agreement in which the sponsor facilitates the activity of the person or the team or the organization sponsored. Sponsorships are valued because they contribute towards public awareness and create goodwill by promoting positive messages for the company and its product.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_5181.shtml

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Internet Marketing Tips on Social Networks

"Robin Sage" as she appeared on social networking pages. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marketing on social networks requires more of a focus on the human element since its more about building relationships then it is your technical knowledge. There's no way around it, social networking for business requires building trust with others which requires time and interpersonal skills. You notice I did not say effort since making 'friends' should be more an act of enjoyment and not regarded as labor!

In order to get the best results when social networking for business here are 3 things you will need to do.

Exercise Patience

Take off your selling shoes and pull up a chair so you can get to know people. Building relationships is an absolute must to even get notice on any social sites and as you know this takes time. Even if you are only social networking for business time must first be taken to develop some type of bond with others or you will be invisible to them and useless to your business!

Establish Credibility

The bonds you do develop need to be meaningful insofar as maintaining a knowledgeable, professional and always helpful profile. For any marketing attempts to be successful people must first have some confidence that you know what you are talking about and that your intentions are good and not all business. Your best results will come ONLY after you have taken the time to develop this good reputation with others.

Develop Trust

The most important 'component' of the reputation you develop is trust! As touched upon above your reputation must be a positive one that reflects credibility but building trust is just as, if not more important. If people can not trust in you then any efforts you put into social networking for business will be wasted. People can not be expected to part with their hard earned money if they lack faith in you so obviously building trust is a priority. The best way to achieve this trust is to make a habit of being helpful or freely offering any type of information that may be of use or interest to others. Do so without any expectations of receiving anything in return and people will quickly regard you in a trustworthy manner. Besides, it feels good to be helpful to other!

There is no need for technical skills when marketing on social networks just simply be willing to pull up a chair and stay for a while. Tapping into the viral potential of these communities will require building relationships with others first and this will take time and patience. By building trust with people in this way simply makes it easier to effectively promote to them in the future. It is very important to remember these are in fact social communities therefore your acceptance MUST precede any marketing efforts. Once this acceptance is earned by following the 3 suggested steps above it will make social networking for business a breeze for you!

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_6710.shtml

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Effective Social Media Marketing Tips

English: Stephen Monaco speaking about Social Media Marketing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Social media marketing is the very effective tool for marketing your products. There is no other alternative marketing strategy for social media marketing. Hence social media marketing is indispensable for any online business. Social media marketing needs a different approach when compared to the other online marketing strategies. For a social media marketing campaign to be successful, it is very much important to understand the tactics that work better. This article is all about the effective social media marketing tips.

1. Creating unique profiles in Social Networks

Social networking sites like myspace and facebook have great importance in business promotion. This part of social media marketing can get lots of traffic to your website along with building credibility among people worldwide. The social networks are now crowded with the online marketers and hence it is important to highlight your profile in the crowd. Though there are lots of customization options available in the social networking sites itself, it is always good to get some professional help for advanced customization. These social media marketing professionals will be able to provide you will very unique profiles which will get noticed by the social media crowd immediately.

2. Don’t try to sell anything in the Social Networks

Many social media marketers just advertise their products through their social media profiles. This is a wrong move. Social networks are for connecting to people and not for advertising the products, Hence your main motive in the social networks should be to connect to as many people as possible. The traffic to your website and the credibility to your services/ products will eventually increase as your networks grow.

3. Don’t leave any social media profiles unattended

Active participation is a basic necessity of any social media marketing campaign. Just creating some profiles in a handful of social media sites doesn’t do any good. You should post some content to the social media profiles frequently and make them look lively. Always remember the fact that Google crawls the profiles that are frequently updated. Moreover, the visitors of your profile will love to see many updates. You should also involve in activities like participating in polls, posting in forums, making comments and connecting with the people of similar interest.

Social Media marketing is a time consuming process and for the moment of truth it is really worth the time you spend. If you don’t have enough time for social media marketing in your tight schedule, there are professional social media marketers who are ready to help you. To the added advantage, these professional social media marketers can analyze your website and create the best marketing strategy. By paying them a nominal fee, you can just sit back and relax, watching your network grow along with the web traffic and business.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_4420.shtml

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Facebook: A Marketing Channel Strategies

Facebook Marketing (photo credit: Social Network Asia)

There are various ways to market your product online and social marketing is just one of those. In comparison with other strategies such as article marketing how heavy do you use facebook as one of your strategies to market a product?

Facebook can be a lucrative internet marketing strategy if used effectively. You can't just use one strategy though, and you have to know that Facebook is more of a branding opportunity, and most successful businesses will not use it to sell products directly, but indirectly (if that makes sense).

Why?

Because building a successful online business isn't about using one channel, it's about using multiple internet marketing strategies together. Lately there is so much hype about using Facebook to market products online. This is completely wrong. People are on Facebook to connect with people, not businesses.

The way people use the internet is much different than old school brick and mortar business. It's not selling to users, it's users having the option to make there own decisions...just a click away.

You need to look at marketing on Facebook as permission based and 99.99% of people will not buy products or services if they "like" your business, or friend request you. Top internet marketers will agree that successful online business is not about getting, it's about giving. That principle even holds more true to Facebook marketing. This is a direct channel to provide value to potential customers, free reports, thoughtful information, humorous tidbits of information sometimes seemingly unrelated to your business.

If potential customers see you as not selling, there more likely to look into what you do, consequently resulting in more traffic and more business.

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Twitter Marketing: Growing Business Strategy

twitter logo map 09 (Photo credit: The Next Web)

Do Twitter marketing really a good strategy to grow your business?

As one of many home based business entrepreneurs, I do this social media marketing to boos my sales. Twitter as one of the social media frontrunner, became as an avenue for business owners and solo entrepreneurs to advertise and to reach potential customers via the internet. It became one of the mainstreams when it comes to social media marketing.

The fact that Twitter rank as one of the ten-most-visited websites worldwide by Alexa’s web traffic analysis means a great opportunity to all business owners to promote their products and/or services on this platform.

Here are some tips on how to have an effective Twitter markting:

1. Know the basics and lingoes of Twitter.

2. Optimize your Twitter Bio.

Make sure to fill up all the required fields to set-up your twitter page. Make it detailed. Put your website URL to your profile to drive traffic to your website. This will also allow people to find out more about your business/company.

3. Schedule your tweets and interact.

If you’re a busy person, and don’t have a budget to hire a social media assistant, “automating tweets” is the best solution to keep your page active.

4. Build Active Followers.

There are a lot of sites nowadays that can give you tons of followers in a breeze such as twellow and twiends but twitter marketing is not just about following and having millions of dormant followers. It is about “interaction”.

In using twitter for your social media campaign, “interaction” is a must. The challenge is to give your audience reason to follow you back and engage in conversation with you. In conversing with your audience, you should talk about things that interest them aside from talking about your business.

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Twitter: A Social Media Marketing Success

twitter y macworld (Photo credit: juque)

Twitter has been discovered and is being used by many businesses and individuals as a successful social media marketing tool. Even US President Barrack Obama is on Tweeter. In fact, Twitter was used heavily in Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign. Popular TV host Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter in January 2009. The New York Times has just appointed a social media editor, Jennifer Preston, and she promptly joined Twitter, sending out her first tweet on May 26. 

It’s so easy. Anyone can register an account. You can then click to “follow” other Tweeters and, hopefully, gain a large following, too. You can read the messages sent out, called “tweets”, by anyone you choose to follow but you can only send messages to those who follow you. 

Tweets are limited to 140 characters. Go over and your message will be cut. This includes prefixes. Among the prefixes used are “@” followed by the the person’s Tweeter username when replying to someone, or “RT@” followed by the source’s username when reposting a tweet, much like reposting a blog entry with a link back to the source. You can use the services of URL shorteners such as tinyurl.com or bit.ly to transform long addresses you can then use in your tweets. 

This is where you have to be very careful. The new NY Times social media editor, Jennifer Preston, sent out an RT on May 26 but she forgot to count her tweet characters carefully. As a result, her tweet was cut and the resulting address she sent out led to Ebay instead to her intended article, “10 Golden Rules on Social Media.” So count your characters before you send out your tweet. 

There are so many ways you can use Twitter to market your site. You can tweet links to your articles, making sure, of course, that your readers will find them useful. Really good articles will most probably earn RTs, spreading the word further and resulting in more visitors landing on your pages. If you have a good web site with rich content, it will deserve many return visits. 

You can also use Twitter to request and gather feedback about your site. If you have developed a good relationship with others in the Twitter community, you will surely get a lot of helpful inputs. 

Twitter can also serve as a bulletin board of sorts where you can make announcements about upates in your site or your products and services. Since your tweets are only sent out to your followers, it is not considered spam. 

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_1738.shtml

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Social Media Marketing Tips: Twitter Marketing Strategies

Image via CrunchBase

When used correctly in a social media marketing campaign, Twitter can be a powerful tool to get your company's information out to customers and potential customers. Twitter can be used to promote specials, give away coupons, advertise new products and connect with customers on a personal basis to inspire loyalty to your company. However, in order for you to successfully connect with the right crowd you're aiming for on Twitter, you need to read these 5 tips for Twitter success. 

1. Make a reasonable follower goal. It's unlikely that you're going to get millions of Twitter followers (unless you're famous), and after all it's better to get 100 good followers who will actually read what you tweet rather than 1,000 spam accounts. Focus on gaining quality followers and grow your network over time. However, if you grow your network too large, you may not be able to keep all your followers happy. If you can get 1,000 good followers who actually interact with you, that's great. If you find yourself at 1,000 followers, next shoot for 5,000 quality followers. 

2. Invest time in your Twitter account. The more time you invest the more you will get out of your Twitter account. In order to attract and maintain followers you have to make sure you're giving them interesting information that they want to read, which means tweeting at least once or twice a day about industry news, fun facts, tips, etc. You can also tweet coupons or specials for your followers to reward them for following. Remember, if all you do is tweet advertisements, your followers are likely to become bored and un-follow you. The key is to keep them engaged daily. 

3. Focus on a specific topic. If you can become known as an expert in a certain topic, people will look to you for information on that topic, which will allow you to gain and maintain quality followers. However, trying to become a expert of a broad topic is hard because there are so many others on Twitter tweeting about that same thing. The more focused your topic is, the more likely you are to gain followers who look to you as an expert on the subject, which will make them keep checking back. 

4. Once you choose your topic, keep your tweets relevant to that topic. Otherwise, you will disappoint your current followers and they may un-follow you. Also you won't be able to attract new followers that are interested in information dealing with that subject. Post links, facts, tips, news, etc. that deal with your specific subject only. 

5. Respond to your followers. Remember, the point of social media marketing is to be social! If someone asks you a question, respond! If you neglect your followers they will neglect you! Sometimes when you have a lot of followers it's hard to respond to every single one, but try your hardest to respond to the majority in order to keep the conversation active. 

6. Take advantage of Twitter tools. There are various Twitter tools online that help finding followers and tweeting easier. Twellow.com is a great Twitter tool that can connect you with thousands of interested followers. The best way to gain followers is to follow first. Narrow your search by categories or use the "Twellowhood" to find people based on location. Then view their profiles, see what they're tweeting about and their interests are and if you think they'd be a relevant follower, follow them. Once they see you're following them, they will view your profile and if they like what you're tweeting about, they'll follow you back. 

Another great tool for business is Hoot Suite. You can manage multiple social media accounts as well as schedule tweets for the future, view tweets, direct messages and more from the people you follow. Scheduling tweets for the future is especially convenient when you're a busy business owner who forgets to tweet every day. You can simply sign on once a week, schedule tweets, and respond to anyone who may have connected with you. 

If you know what to do and how to keep up with your business Twitter account it can be a powerful social media marketing tool. Put the work in and Twitter can help you attract customers and connect with current customers to address their questions and concerns as well as create a relationship and loyalty.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/site_promotion/article_2422.shtml

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