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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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

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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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What is Social Media Marketing?

What is social media?

Social media is a broad term used to describe the various tools, networks and technologies for sharing content, ideas and knowledge and connecting and collaborating online. It encompasses wikis, podcasts, blogs, social networks, forums, message boards and other viral-type platforms where communities of people come together.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (a/k/a viral or buzz marketing) is a form of Web marketing that seeks to increase visibility, drive traffic, better communications and foster awareness of a brand, organization, event or idea. This approach is quick and aggressive, and costs next to nothing to initiate a campaign.

Social Media Marketing

SMM on the other hand plays more of an active role in relation to social media by referring to the creation and distribution of content and other messages through the social web by some form of viral marketing. This can be anything from creating compelling content that gets bookmarked and even hits digg's homepage to spreading a viral video by putting it on YouTube and other social media websites. It's about the things that are done off-site, for example, participating in online communities where your customers hang out would be an active role that falls under SMM.

Social media marketing uses social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to engage with prospects on an ongoing basis. Social media sites encourage discussions, feedback and sharing of information between you and your prospects.

Social media marketing has really sprouted its wings within the last couple of years And its no wonder, YouTube has about 28,000,000 viewers and Facebook has over 100,000,000 users...and over 50% log in daily. That's why social media marketing is essential to your businesses success.

You'll see immediate benefits like prospect awareness of your "brand", you'll become closer to your customers and find out more about their needs, you'll build.

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Should your company have a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

Should your company have a Social Media Marketing Strategy? Should you be on Facebook? Should you be on Google+? Should you blog? Should you Tweet?

Social Media Marketing is today's most successful online marketing strategy and is being embraced by companies all over the world from Fortune 100 to small companies.

Social Media Marketing Strategy involves engaging PEOPLE online social networks to generate EXPOSURE, increase TRAFFIC, improve SEARCH RANKINGS, build strong BRAND ADVOCATES, generate QUALITY LEADS and grow SALES.

From start-ups to small and medium-sized companies Social Media is the greatest equalizer as it allows them to compete with competitors with much larger marketing budgets.

60% of the sales cycle is over - before a buyer talks to your sales person because of Google and Social Media and all the information available on the web today. There is so much research and consideration a buyer can do that they don't need a sales person as early. When they talk to a sales person they are much more educated and have much better questions and can clearly understand your business compared to your competition.

A visitor coming from a Social Media site is 10 times more likely to make a purchase online than an average visitor.

An effective Social Media Marketing Strategy is not about the tools (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.). It is about knowing how use these tools to attract, engage and interact with your existing and potential customers.

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Give Social Network Asia a PM via Facebook to discuss how we can help

1. You develop and execute a Social Media Marketing Strategy
2. Your existence Social Media presence become more effective
3. You better utilize the various Social Media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blog, Google+, LinkedIn etc. by providing training in how to use these tools more effectively
4. Implement other tools which will significantly reduce the time you spend in social media

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