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The Art of Social Marketing: Is It Right For Your Business?

Guest post by: Jeneth Blackert

Article Overview: When the economy takes a downturn, small business owners look to in-person networking to keep cash flow moving in their business. What most business owners don't realize is there may be a simpler way. Would it be beneficial to grow your local business with social networking and web 2.0 ?

The Art of Social Marketing: Is It Right For Your Business?

When the economy takes a downturn, small business owners look to in-person networking to keep cash flow moving in their business. What most business owners don't realize is there may be a simpler way.

Would it be beneficial to grow your local business with social networking and web 2.0?

Here are a few factors to consider before diving in:

1. Is your target audience searching for your solution online?

2. Does your niche market provide a solution that a social networker could recommend?

3. Do you already collaborate or in-person network with other business owners that utilize social networking?

4. Do you know that your website will convert a prospect to client if you drive traffic to it?
I know what you might be thinking ... I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start.

Here’s a step-by-step starter guide for creating an online, social network for your business.

Where to start:

1. Start with Facebook – Facebook offers a simple, step-by-step way to create a profile. So, go ahead create a profile and ask all your in-person friends to join you.

2. Share information – Information makes social networking beneficial for those in your network. Share pictures, audio, video and even articles with those contacts. This offers two benefits:

a) As you do this other contacts will find you or you can search for contacts by observing what others are sharing with your network.

b) People will become interested in you and what you do. This is drive traffic to your profile and oftentimes your website.

3. Explore other social networking options – Depending on what media you are using to promote your company various social media might make sense for your business. For example if you want to create videos, you would choose youTube to post profile and then share on Facebook. On the other hand if you promote via articles you probably want to consider a strategy that includes a blog and a Facebook blog. That’s right – post your articles on your blog, Facebook blog and as many other article distribution sites.

4. Don’t forget to link – Linking back from your social media sites, articles and blog to your
website will help create traffic, which is ultimately the goal.

5. Create more traffic – Once you have these social media strategies under your belt there are many, many ways to drive more traffic to your website and sell products and services. Let’s take Twitter as an example. Twitter offers a way to share upcoming products, services, news and insights with colleagues – like mini announcements. By using this social media tool in this way, we gain exposure by keeping contacts in our network informed, keep ourselves on the forefront of their minds and build our credibility.

Online social networking and marketing is an easy and simple way to come along side your current in-person networking. By acting as a resource, keeping people informed of your business activities and making your business accessible in various platforms, you increase your visibility online, driving traffic to your website and eventually converting that exposure in to tangible sales and profits.

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Article Tags: blog, cash flow, downturn, economy, faceb, facebook, might make sense, network share, network with other business owners, networker, networking options, niche market, share information, small business owners, social networking, start 1, starter guide, target audience, traffic
Referred by: http://www.brandu.com/rd.cfm?id=743



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Kevin, Like GT suggested, I also think you can add Internet Marketing as a sub category in the Marketing section and also a Social marketing as subcategory. Online marketing/internet marketing/online promotion are the same, and it will be best to use the common term - Internet marketing. I can't think about someone to moderate a Social Marketing category. We all use it, we all know how to make it work and we all have our own different experience with it.
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".


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