Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

Social media marketing is a new, free and very powerful tool and it can serve you very well when you are searching for free internet marketing methods to promote your internet home business online.

Social media site are called social for a good reason. This is a place for people from all over the world find and connect with other people with same interests and hobbies, and form groups online, build friendships, have new relationships and share their favorites interests and ideas.

It was only natural for these people to start and use these groups, friendships and new relationships for their businesses. When you have online friends, you can reach a larger crowd of people, all are potential customers, and this is how the social media marketing or social networking was born.

So how easy it is to use the social bookmarking for internet marketing purpose?

Step 1 – Join some of the leading social media sites. Websites such as Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and more are very popular social media sites. Bookmarking a page in those site and some other sites can be indexed very quickly by the search engines, this is very good if you want to drive traffic to your website, free and let the search engines notice you.

This tactic is very good, When you need to drive traffic to a new website and have no money to invest in advertising.

Step 2 – Complete you profile. If you want to promote your internet home business using social media sites and social networking, try to give as much details as you can. When you are online do not hide behind a screen name, if you are here for business let the people know a little about you, sign in with your real name, write a few detail about yourself and on your home business. At the end give a link back to you website and a few of your mostly recommended products.

Step 3 – After finishing your profile is time socialize. Social marketing is all about making friends, finding people with the same interests as yours, joining groups and building relationships.

These friends are important for your business and they will help you in time to promote your home business, but you will have to help them too.

Step 4 – Now it is time to start the social networking. Social bookmarking is the word. You bookmark you website or blog, and you let people know about it. You also have to bookmark other people websites and blogs, and vote for your friend’s bookmarks.
When in social media marketing you need to give to others if you want them to give back to you, this is when you get the best results.

Step 5 - Ask your friends to vote for your favorite links and offer to do the same for them. From here the traffic to your website will only grow and you get it all for free.
If you join the top leading social media sites, you will get more traffic, as the website popularity grow you will get more votes, your bookmark get indexed faster and this is also counts as a backlink from some of those sites.

So everyone wants to be on top in Google, but you don’t always get what you want now do you? Before things were so much more simple; you advertise, you give good service, you get customers. Now you need to compete with other companies via the Internet as well.

Being number one (that includes page 1 cause lets face it, there are just too many of us competing) in the search engines is critical as it can do wonders to businesses all over. I mean you don’t even need to rent a place anymore if you have a great seat on Google! But how do you get there?

There are so many things you can do from SEO - link building, submitting articles to different sites, to having landing pages with promotions. So what really helps? Right now, I’m going to talk about two hot topics, Google Page Rank and Social media index.

What are they and how do they help?

Google Page Rank is a bit on the confusing side as even Google has poor information on it. In the simplest of words, it’s a voting system, and an American voting system at that since some votes are more important than others. Google will take the link votes and determine which pages are more important based on them. Then the scores are used along with a lot of other factors to determine if the page will rank well in a search.

Google itself says, and I quote, ”PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.”

Now what about Social Media Index? Well, normally we thought someone’s web influence was measured by how successful his or her blog is, and that was done by counting how many people subscribed or linked to it. Now that’s not credible as people use different social media tools to get out there. So how do the two work with each other? They don’t. The battle comes in the concepts of the two. Page Rank is supposed to be the ‘producer’ attracting the ‘consumer’ to their page. With Social Media invading every single computer, links are being passed on to friends and friends of friends and it’s no long a producer to consumer act, it’s getting all tangles up. The consumers are talking and listening to each other. So is Page Rank still really needed? With the consumers helping the consumers, the producers have less and less say than they did before. What do you think should happen now?

According to WikiPedia social media is the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. It offers a fantastic way for you to build an Internet business compared to even just a couple of years ago. Let’s take a little closer look at social media and how you can get the maximum benefit from it with your own Internet business.
The key thing with social media is how it allows interaction between you and your website visitors. I also want to say at this time I hope you have a blog set up and are utilizing it to create social media. Blogging is a fantastic platform that allows interaction in many different ways between visitors and the content you are trying to present.
For example, the way you post an article on the blog today can be totally different than creating web pages were in the past. You can integrate pictures, audio, video, and other things to make your blog seem more exciting and alive
How you create interaction with your visitor is by allowing them to post comments on your blog, participate in contests, vote on polls, or even add content directly by writing blog articles for you.
This interaction is what creates a feeling of community amongst all of the different bloggers and visitors. People can begin to share their own experiences and stories as links to the theme of your blog.
Networking is a big part of social media. In fact social networking is another term that has come out of this. The idea of networking is not new and has been around businesses and clubs for many, many years.
Network marketing is a perfect example of a business that is built totally around people helping people. In the off line world traditional businesses would get together for Rotary club meetings and various things that allowed them to network with other business owners.
Today there are feeds are available such as an RSS feed to keep subscribers up to date on what is going on in your business. Many people will subscribe to your RSS feed because they want to continue to network with you after they are getting ready to leave your blog initially.
All of this offers a tremendous opportunity for building loyalty amongst readers and repeat visitors were more sales. Social media and social networking makes this all possible for you.

Let’s think about this for a minute. Network Marketing has always been about building a business based on a person’s relationships. While very few people have a large enough warm market to build a large business, a persistent MLM entrepreneur can eventually experience the success they desire.

That requires time, persistence and a willingness to build the relationships required to achieve that success. Going to your conventional networking events, your local coffee shop, or pretty much anywhere you can find new contacts is great, but a very slow and painful way to go.

What happens in most cases is that the new Network Marketer are so anxious to add new people to his/her business, the moment they meet someone new they immediately overwhelm them with info concerning how great an opportunity they have to offer. Do this often enough and people begin to run when they see you coming.

There is a VERY good reason that we have two ears and one mouth. We, Network Marketers, should use them proportionately. Regardless of what you are selling, yes – you are selling, but that is a topic for another day.
As I stated regardless of what you are selling you should be a professional and ask the questions required to qualify the person you are speaking with as a good candidate for your opportunity. Please understand that not everyone you know is a good prospect for your business opportunity. In fact most people that you know have no desire to build a MLM business. They are very comfortable with their life as it is and are not willing to put in the effort required to build a business. As such they are NOT good prospects.

While Network Marketing has been around for years, fast forward to Web 2.0 and the Social Media channels that are available to the MLM industry. While there are more and more savvy Network Marketers showing up in the various social media sites that are available, many still have not learned that they cannot vomit all over everyone they have connected with.

The same still holds true in the world of Social Media that holds true in the world of conventional networking. Whether you are building a relationship via the keyboard from thousands of miles away or sharing a cup of coffee in your favorite coffee shop the same rules apply….more on that later.

Just a few of the sites that you should be participating on are: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Through active participation on these sites you can build a solid list of contacts, establish yourself as a leader in the MLM industry, build traffic to your website site, and earn the right to talk to new prospects about your opportunity. Yes, “earn the right to discuss your opportunity”.

Do NOT pitch everyone that you are connected with, especially when first meeting them. Let me ask a quick question at this point.

In which of the following cases do you think it is an easier sell?
You are trying to convince a prospect that they really want to join your business opportunity.

or

You are answering the questions of a prospect that wants to know how to join your business opportunity.
Spend the time, do your homework, and establish yourself as a leader and you will find the second scenario above happening to you on an ongoing basis. Imagine having 10 to 20 new prospects each day that want information on how to

join your MLM business.
Social media channels are no more forgiving than your contacts that you meet in person. Keep trying to force your latest business opportunity on everyone that you meet and you will soon find yourself without any friends.
Focus on building relationships through participation, establish yourself as a leader in the MLM industry, provide VALUE to your relationships by providing good content, and do NOT pitch everyone. Within a very short amount of time you can build a very large contact list of friends by leveraging the technology available through the multitude of Social Media sites available today.

While there are a large number of Social Media sites available as mentioned above the most popular sites are: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The most important steps that you can take to start this process of building your Network Marketing business through Social Media are:

- Establish a marketing plan to include the sites, strategies, time spent, goals, etc.
- Put together a complete profile that establishes you as a leader
- Consistent and ongoing participation
- Improve yourself: Learn, Learn, Learn

There is a lot more to this topic that I will cover, but that will have to wait for another day. If you are not taking advantage of Web 2.0 and the Social Media channels available to you as a means of building your MLM business you are doing yourself a huge injustice.

With the increasing popularity of social media sites, the use of social traffic to drive visitors to sites, blogs or online stores is also gaining attention. Before the explosion of social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, many online marketers focused on paid traffic in order to significantly boost the number of people visiting their websites. There is really nothing wrong with paid traffic strategies. In fact, these strategies can be very effective. However, they can be quite expensive. If you want your paid campaign to have an impact in your business, you may have to spend hundreds of dollars a day.

But with the social traffic solution, you will make use of social media sites that are free. All you need to do is invest a little of your time and participate in these types of websites. Create good quality materials that will help you maximize your traffic-enhancing strategies. It is important to note that simply having a profile in Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other types of social media sites does not guarantee an increase in your Web traffic. You need to know how to make your profile attractive to the people who matter, the ones that belong to your target market.

Another advantage of social traffic over paid traffic is the influence that you can gain in social media. As an influencer, you can affect people’s buying decisions. In order for your paid traffic to buy from your online store, you need to convince them with a great copy, huge discounts, and a lot of other freebies. But with web traffic coming from social media sites, people learn about you through viral marketing or word of mouth. This means that Web users who go to your site are already partially convinced that your product or service is good because someone from their social media network recommended you.

There is no doubt that paid traffic solutions can effectively encourage people to go to your site. However, this marketing campaign is only good if you have money to pay. Once you no longer have budget for PPC or banner ads, your traffic may also dwindle. The effect of social traffic is different. The efforts that you put in today may not have immediate effects on your traffic now, but it can definitely explode your online presence in the weeks or months to come. As long as you have your profile in social media sites and you continue to participate in such communities, you will experience an increase in your Web traffic.

Social media marketing is a new, free and very powerful tool and it can serve you very well when you are searching for free internet marketing methods to promote your internet home business online.
Social media site are called social for a good reason. This is a place for people from all over the world find and connect with other people with same interests and hobbies, and form groups online, build friendships, have new relationships and share their favorites interests and ideas.
It was only natural for these people to start and use these groups, friendships and new relationships for their businesses. When you have online friends, you can reach a larger crowd of people, all are potential customers, and this is how the social media marketing or social networking was born.
So how easy it is to use the social bookmarking for internet marketing purpose?
Step 1 – Join some of the leading social media sites. Websites such as Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and more are very popular social media sites. Bookmarking a page in those site and some other sites can be indexed very quickly by the search engines, this is very good if you want to drive traffic to your website, free and let the search engines notice you.
This tactic is very good, When you need to drive traffic to a new website and have no money to invest in advertising.
Step 2 – Complete you profile. If you want to promote your internet home business using social media sites and social networking, try to give as much details as you can. When you are online do not hide behind a screen name, if you are here for business let the people know a little about you, sign in with your real name, write a few detail about yourself and on your home business. At the end give a link back to you website and a few of your mostly recommended products.
Step 3 – After finishing your profile is time socialize. Social marketing is all about making friends, finding people with the same interests as yours, joining groups and building relationships.
These friends are important for your business and they will help you in time to promote your home business, but you will have to help them too.
Step 4 – Now it is time to start the social networking. Social bookmarking is the word. You bookmark you website or blog, and you let people know about it. You also have to bookmark other people websites and blogs, and vote for your friend’s bookmarks.
When in social media marketing you need to give to others if you want them to give back to you, this is when you get the best results.
Step 5 – Ask your friends to vote for your favorite links and offer to do the same for them. From here the traffic to your website will only grow and you get it all for free.
If you join the top leading social media sites, you will get more traffic, as the website popularity grow you will get more votes, your bookmark get indexed faster and this is also counts as a backlink from some of those sites.

It’s not surprising that social media has become so popular in so short a time. Not only is it a source of entertainment for most people, it is also the newest strategy for acquiring customers for businesses. And with hot new tools like Twitter, social media marketing has only become more progressive and popular!

What Is Twitter?

In case you’re not familiar with Twitter, it is a social media tool that allows people to know what their fellow twitterers (people using twitter) are doing at this very moment.

Are you getting ready for bed? Put that on Twitter! Are you buying a new couch or writing a report on the effects of social media marketing? Put that on Twitter! Are you throwing a birthday party for your golden retriever? Well, you can put that on Twitter as well. There are no boundaries as to what you can put on Twitter. In Twitter, even the most mundane updates about your life can be pretty liberating. 

Sounds simple, right? Perhaps, it is this simplicity that has made Twitter quite a sensation on the Internet. There’s also something amusing about knowing what other people are doing and letting them know your own business as well. This combination of fun and simplicity is what ultimately appeals to Twitter fans.

Applying Twitter In Business

If you’re business-minded, then you probably already have more than a few ideas on how to make this social media marketing tool work for you. Having a Twitter account allows you to inform your clients and would-be clients the progress in your company. You’re not putting up an ad every week (because that tends to be annoying). However, you get the chance to share with them what’s happening to your company’s products, people, tools, etc. right now. 

Twitter, unlike MySpace and Facebook, poses an advantage for new and advanced marketers. As an efficient social media marketing tool, Twitter allows you to build a giant list of followers. It allows your clients and subscribers to see what you’re doing right now. It gives them access to your immediate profile and permits you to share your ideas with other twitterers. All free of charge.

How Twitter Can Explode Your Profits

While many people have other purposes and values for the use of the free service, the marketer can use Twitter to jumpstart a list of followers that can grow into thousands.

If you’re someone who sells used cars, you can use Twitter to attract members who are interested in automobiles. When a new shipment comes in, you can use Twitter to announce that the latest Ford model has arrived. Or if you’re having a sale, you can use Twitter to let everybody know about it.

These followers are the next best thing to customers. If they haven’t bought anything from you yet, then you can rest assured that they will be buying something soon. As long as you keep providing them something nice to look forward to, they will always be enticed to purchase something from your company.

Think of it as fishing. You already have the fish interested in your bait. All you have to do is wait for the fish to bite. According to quantcast.com, Twitter reaches about 6.1 million U.S. people every month. This social media tool has also reached other countries and is hugely popular in Japan. In fact, there are other Twitter-like applications that have popped up due to its insane fame!

Despite the huge popularity of Twitter, it is not a disorganized system that doesn’t have any limits. For example, you can only send 1,000 updates, 100 API requests and send 250 direct messages each day. And while there is no limit to the people who can follow you, the same freedom doesn’t apply vice-versa.

The maximum number of people you can follow is limited to 2,000. In Twitter-speak, to follow means to receive Twitter updates. This limit will only be lifted if you manage to attract more than 2,000 followers to your account.

According to Twitter, this is done to prevent SPAM users from adding up into their system and to prevent abuse from all current members.

It’s not that difficult to attract more followers into your account. In the long run, this will only make your Twitter account more meaningful because of the effort you’ve put into it.

The beauty at this stage is that once you are at such a level, it’s easier to attract new followers into your account. The benefits from taking such steps are acquiring your own list of eager followers (in which you can pitch your own products and services); and more importantly, gaining new business contacts.

Other Social Media Marketing Methods

There are other methods of social media marketing available for your use. Twitter isn’t the only way to enhance your business and get a constant flow of leads.

Other methods you can explore include:

1) Blogs

2) Community forums

3) Social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn.

4) Video-sharing sites such as Youtube, Metacafe, Google videos, Yahoo videos, and AOL videos.

5) Content sharing sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages, Wetpaint, Qassia, and Google Knol.

These days, you shouldn’t just limit yourself to one thing. With the Internet as vast as it is, you should use every opportunity to make new contacts and establish yourself. Besides, think of all the new things you can learn from interacting with other people online!

Leave comments on your choice blogs and participate in forum discussions that allow for signature files after every post.  Make informative videos and upload them to video-sharing sites.  Explode your list of contacts through social networking sites. Share your knowledge and be recognized as an authority by submitting your content to content-sharing sites.

Not only will these help you establish credibility, you probably won’t even have to worry or stress about making money in the future. Remember that social media marketing, like any other marketing methods, works if you work it! Now like many of our mentors say – get to work!

I came across a video the other day that showed an animated twenty-something male sitting at his laptop and closing it up in disgust. Suddenly an icon that looked amazing like one of the social media company’s logo walks into the room and with a cartoon face begins inquiring why the main character left the social media site.
The man explains that he is tired of the site and needs to move on with his life. Suddenly the icon of another famous social media site arrives and then three more drop by. They all begin bullying the man to come back to cyberspace and play.
Finally the animated man says that he needs to get a life and move on. Although every cartoon icon begs him to come back the brave man walks outside and begins walking downtown. He sits at a pleasant sidewalk café, but no one will talk to him. This cartoon man tries virtually everything possible to enjoy life.
Suddenly he looks around to find no one paying any attention to him and says, “This is lame.” He then proceeds to walk home and open up his laptop as the video ends.
For many online users there may be more truth to this video than they want to admit. Some of the most engaging conversation many will encounter during a day will be online through social media.
I intentionally left out any specific social media page names because there are simply too many of them to list. Each social media page focuses on something specific and then provides some more generalized offerings.
It may be a sad commentary that for some individuals the online world may be preferred to real life, but this is often the truth.
This is why marketing to this genre is important. You see these individuals are extremely motivated to be online and engage others in the same way. These are not sideline players. These are the first string online users who eat, drink, breathe and sleep Internet.
When you market to social media you are not simply embracing a casual online user. These are hardcore users who often understand special coding issues for their social media page. They know how to add widgets and other interactive devices to their personal social media world. They have made the term geek cool.
This truth may be why Google has been so interested in developing advertising accessibility within social media sites. Their PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising can result in profits for virtually everyone involved.
Social media is a format that has found a future in spare parts. So many associate programs are being used to develop interactive content, personalized page design and secure music distribution. Because social media has left the door open we will likely see more and more mix and match options to drive future potential in social media.
Whether you are looking to develop a direct or indirect marketing campaign via social media it is a format that lends itself to reaching out.
So, ummmm, reach out already.

Social networking sites are the most preferred segments on the internet. It is considered as the next major opportunity for massively growing business. These sites help the users to communicate with others in order to survive in this high-tech world. Social gathering is an important part in everyone’s life, as it enables the users to speak with others when they find something common or similar between each other to start up a conversation or a small talk. Social media and networking allows the users to move beyond their reach. With the help of passive ads, forums, communities, chat rooms and online games, the users can actively engage within social networks.To be more specific, these networking sites are defined as the grouping of several people together into to specific groups. It is just like small communities that are based on particular topic. It is a form of internet marketing that seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks. The goal of each site varies from business to business, but it usually involves building of brand awareness, increasing visibility and sells a product or service. These networking communities offer the users to join the social media channels and helps the users to integrate and avail social experience. Social network or social gathering has created new ways to communicate and share information with others across the world.Social media and networking is becoming an essential marketing tool for connecting with people and optimising online presence. It is a platform that people use to publish, converse and share content via Internet. Video, pod cast, blogs, discussion boards and social media and networking sites are some of the highly used tools, which online businessmen use to build relationship with their customers and keep them on websites for longer period. Such sites provides more opportunities for organisations to present optimised content that can be indexed easily by search engines and ultimately improves site rating. Before implementing social media elements, it is important to evaluate customers to create an effective strategy. If customers are professionals who commute then pod cast can be easily downloaded which can be very effective.Social sites focus on building online communities of people who share same interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most online social network services provide a variety of ways for users to interact including e-mail and instant messaging services. Social networking websites are used by millions of people everyday.The social networking sites have a number of characteristics that make them different from traditional media such as newspapers, television, books and radio. The social media for instance, depends on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words build shared-meaning using technology. These online networking websites allow the people to stay in touch with others with whom it might not be possible to speak frequently. Moreover, people can make contacts which may be helpful in the business. People can also create an impact on others perspective, as online social networking is the best thing that could ever happen.Social media is infinite, as there are not set number of pages or hours. The users can participate in social media by adding comments or stories. Content in social media plays an important play. As a matter of fact, it can take the form of text, graphics, audio or videos. These formats can be intermingled to get something relevant. Online social media is available through feeds, which enable users to subscribe via feed readers and allow other publishers to create mash ups.

The inspiration for this article lies in a fantastic slide presentation I saw fairly recently on slideshare.net. The presentation, aptly named “What the f*** is social media?” was put together by Marta Z Kagan. Over 74 slides, one is just hit with fact after fascinating fact – initially about the reach and penetration of social media, and then how to converse with audiences. It’s truly inspiring stuff. Wikipedia broadly defines social media as the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. Kagan sums it up nicely saying “social media is people having conversations online”.The mechanisms for these conversations include a number of mediums – some are communicative, others collaborative and others include multimedia or a combination of all three. Social media can take many forms, but one element that consistently sets all of its incarnations apart from “traditional” media, is that it is produced to be shared. There’s more to social media than social networking sites. While extremely popular (Time magazine wrote in October 2007 that social networking sites are officially more popular than porn!), they are not the only way people connect online. Other media include wikis, microblogging (like twitter), blogs, social bookmarking (like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon), photo sharing (like Flickr), video sharing (like YouTube), pod casts and many others. How big is this phenomenon really?There are over two and a half million articles in English on Wikipedia. 75% of Americans watch at least one video online a month. YouTube alone has hundreds of millions of videos being viewed daily. There are over 200-million blogs on the internet. Just under 60% of the people online have joined a social network. And these are just some of the staggering numbers that get thrown around. This just serves to prove just how powerful and wide the reach of social media is.What’s the difference between social media and traditional media?The main difference is that social media is not a monologue. It is a dialogue that the brand sometimes does not lead. People are talking online right now – and this is an aspect of social media marketing. Research has shown that 90% of people who can skip television adverts do just that. A 2007 Nielsen report entitled “Trust in Advertising” showed that people trust referrals from their friends and other customers far more implicitly than one-way company messaging. Fundamentally, people don’t care what a company or brand thinks, they care what their friends think.So, how do you harness this?The short answer is: subtly. You can’t always lead the conversations – and you need to be honest. Don’t bombard the audience with noise and marketing messages – they will just switch off, or you’ll be lost in the din – neither are optimal situations. Create personas and communicate. You need to allow your customers to feel ownership of the brand. You need to enable, engage and inspire people. A flat one-sided message is not going to get anybody excited about a brand or product, and this is how to start a buzz. There’s no real “trick” to social media marketing. What it comes down to essentially, is listening to your customers and participating with them.