By now you’ve heard the hype–Facebook this, LinkedIn that, Twitter blah blah blah. What’s the deal? Is social networking, marketing, and online communication a trend or the wave of the future?
I say neither. Social media and all that comes with it is a tool for connecting–getting people the information they want, and listening to what they have to say. For business owners like you (I’m looking at you, blogger-who-lives-in-your-mother’s-basement, YOU are also a business owner!), social networking can be the difference between a successful business that has a cute online presence and a VERY successful business that creates, nurtures, and develops personal, intimate connections with its audience of consumers. Sound enticing? It’s not as easy as you may think, but it’s also not difficult. Social media, at its core, is driven by two things: communication and connections. Communication online should begin and end with listening–through channels that are set up specifically to monitor what you tell them to monitor. On Twitter, for example, you can search hashtags (words that are prefaced by a “#”) relating to your business or industry, or even your company and brand name itself. I use HootSuite to help me with this by setting up searches that pull streaming (live) Tweets and messages from the “Twitterverse” into an easy-to-use column. For my business, I search #socialmedia, #social, #marketing, and combinations of all three words to fetch interesting and useful Tweets that are related to what I might want to talk about.
More importantly, I can use these search results to understand the problems, questions, and trends that are spreading around the web, and begin to start conversations with people who may care about what I have to say. Remember–listening comes first! By combining these searches on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google (sign up for a Daily Alert with your keywords and you’ll get an email every time Google finds relative data), and other hotspots online, you’ll be ready to begin your conversations with the movers and shakers of your niche. If you really want to make money at home, you need to be able to follow your habits and systems you put in place.
Once you’ve been listening for awhile, start reaching out to these people by connecting. Connect via Twitter by following those who you find are Tweeting useful information, who have asked questions you’ve answered, and who seem to be in your industry as well. Send @replies asking questions about relative topics they might be able to answer, and Tweet some of the helpful responses back into the stream. Do the same things on LinkedIn networks and Facebook as well. Most important, always strive to be helpful and useful to your connections. As I mentioned before, nurture them and take care of them. These connections are your online rolodex, and pretty soon you’ll begin to see the payoff as people make their way to your corner of the web and begin asking you direct questions.
Finally, see social media not as separate entities and “cliques,” but as a whole. The people you’re connecting with on Twitter are the same people you should seek out on LinkedIn and Facebook, and they probably also have blogs as well. Leave them comments on their blogs, drop them a line on Facebook, and retweet their Twitter updates, and you’ll be viewed by others as being “everywhere” in your niche, whether it’s a niche focused on gold coins, lawn care, or making money online. As a side note, for example, if you are blogging and connecting with people in order to try and find people to buy gold coins, by connecting first and frequently through social media, you’ll establish the rapport and trust with them needed to make you into a friend, not a salesman. This approach applies equally to any particular niche in which you enter trying to make money. Once you achieve the status of being “everywhere,” it won’t take long to be able to leverage this expertise and ubiquity and start to make real business happen!
This post is intended to be a brief introduction to the crazy world of social media, and I almost certainly forgot some basic concepts. Do a search for social networking sites to get started, and see which one work best for your business. Please feel free to take part in the conversation by leaving a comment below!
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