Social Networking and Social Media Marketing are all the rage these days but there are still many people who don’t get what it can do for their business and haven’t quite gotten involved. Many others who are active on the social networks tell me that haven’t figured it out yet and are not seeing tangible results. If you prefer to keep your experience personal and use Facebook and Twitter just to interact with your friends and family, then that’s fine. If you’d like to use it for more business building, then here are my top 10 Social Networking strategies I’ve been using this year to expand my reach, attract media and speaking opportunities, create powerful new alliances and generate new revenue. Try them for yourself and become your own Pied Piper of Social Networking.
1. View your social networking activities as an extension of your marketing plan.
Consider duplicating online the activities you participate in to attract and educate prospective customers. The more of a strategic marketing plan you already have, the easier it is to execute this strategy on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
2. Identify and follow your prospective customers.
You probably have an idea who your ideal customer is so it shouldn’t be so difficult to search for them either by name or descriptive qualities. Follow them and who they know and you’ll create a snowball effect of followers thereafter.
3. Identify and follow people you’d like to partner with.
There are plenty of people out there who have complimentary services and who reach a similar demographic. It’s easier to meet and start a conversation online. You’ll take it offline and strike up a deal in no time! Same approach applies for investors, mentors, and other resource people.
4. Share yourself authentically.
Give information freely, answer questions, ask questions, share resource links, start conversations with people on your list, chime in on conversations of others. Also, if you regularly share and promote the postings of others, your periodic self-promotion will be accepted.
5. Connect to the media.
I like to follow anyone involved in radio, TV, or print not only to follow their perspective on current events but to also be in ready mode to be interviewed or take advantage of some other publicity related opportunity that comes my way.
6. Be gracious at all times.
What happens online stays online. Period.
7. It is what you make of it.
Approaching this in a focused, systematic way while engaging in daily conversations will yield you positive results. If you don’t think Social Networking is worth it and participate only sporadically, it will NOT yield measurable results.
8. Rave about your colleagues, friends and customers.
What goes around comes around--- they will talk about you too and others will notice the buzz!
9. Keep a schedule and automate some of your activities.
There are tools such a FriendFeed. Ping.fm and Posterous allowing you to update all your profiles at the same time which multiples your efforts. Also, just spending as little as 15 minutes twice daily has an impact.
10. Invite people to cross over to your “island”
Where do you do business? If you want people to join you in a program, come to your store or visit your website, it’s a lot easier to simply ASK them to join you once they know who you are.
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