Social media question

[bizwomanrachel]

Hi,
I'm fairly new to bringing my business online, so I am doing a lot of research into the best way to market. I've heard that using Facebook and Twitter are very powerful. I think I sort of understand why...but I'd really like to know everyone else's opinons. Also what is working for you? What tools should I use? What should I put on my Facebook page or what kinds of things should I tweet about? And how can I get followers?

Thanks all....

Rachel

[GT Bulmer]

Hi, Rachel:

Welcome to the Entrepreneur Forums. I know you will find lots of great marketing info here in the various topic threads to help you begin formulating a plan of action.

I am not on FaceBook, but I am active on Twitter. Several forum members have posted their Twitter IDs in this forum thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3338

On Twitter, I typically post a variety of comments, from links to my blog posts, to pages on my website, affiliate marketing links, links to online resources, and I try to retweet interesting Twitter posts made by other Twitter members.

The idea with Social Media and Social Networking is not to come across as too commercial, too promotional. You want to fit in as a contributing member of a particular social community. For that reason, I try to create a blend of Twitter comments from the informational, to the helpful to the outright promotional.

Do you presently have a website? And if you do, do you blog? These are two very important elements of online marketing. Other methods of marketing online include article marketing and participating in a variety of online forums like this one.

As a member of this forum (and most other forums) you are allowed and encouraged to set up a "signature" that can include a link to your website and will appear automatically everytime you post in a topic thread. To set up your signature, go to the User Control Panel - ucp.php - click on Profile, then Edit Signature.

GT

[Takuya]

I've written a few blog posts on businesses using Twitter. Here are a few and maybe some of these will inspire you to come up with your own.

http://mesablogger.com/2009/06/26/doing ... emarkable/ -- this article mentions @kogiBBQ out of Los Angeles. The two moving trucks drive all over LA but the only way for you to know their route is by following them on Twitter everyday. By the time they arrive, there are normally 2hr waiting line of people wanting to eat their Korean/Mexican fusion tacos, burritos etc.

http://mesablogger.com/2009/06/29/conne ... g-twitter/ the next article shows you can use Twitter to connect with others in the same city. Twitter allows you to use http://search.twitter.com and enter words like "Toronto" or "Toronto, locksmith" or whatever people are tweeting using those keywords. Then you can subscribe to its "RSS feeds" into your Google Reader or other RSS reader to stay on topic.

This way, whenever someone tweets you about your chosen keywords, you'll be able to respond.

Yesterday, singer Jewel tweeted by saying "Is anyone in (my city) coming July 17?" She was referring to her concert in my city this coming Friday. I responded to her tweet by replying.

It used to be that the only way for someone like me to connect to someone like Jewel was what I read in magazines or news, but now, with direct communication tool like Twitter is allowing us to connect faster with wider audience of people you've probably never imagined possible before.

[GT Bulmer]

... It used to be that the only way for someone like me to connect to someone like Jewel was what I read in magazines or news, but now, with direct communication tool like Twitter is allowing us to connect faster with wider audience of people you've probably never imagined possible before.

Hi, Takuya:

Thanks for the post. Your mentions of @kogiBBQ out of Los Angeles and how to connect with others in your city are interesting and informative.

I quoted a portion of your post, above. I am wondering about your opinion on celebrity tweeters: how do you know if they are the real person or just a hired stand-in?

I'm following a few celebrities, although I have seldom tried to make contact with them via tweets. I am of the opinion that most of them are too busy and too career-focused to be spending time tweeting on Twitter. However, with Twitter being the "in thing" right now, celebrities just "have to have" a Twitter presence to keep with the times. So, they have their assistant take care of it for them.

What do you think?

GT

[Takuya]

They seem to be clear about it when their managers tweet. I don't follow Brittany Spears but I think it's her managers tweet and not her. Guy Kawasaki has 3 or 4 ghost helpers and sometimes their tweets are accompanied by initials. I haven't read them carefully recently, but when Seth Godin started out, his were all blog updates and nothing else.

High profile people in many outlets of media starting to have Twitter accounts, and when they manage all their tweets and want to be authentic about controlling it, they seem to communicate with their followers. Not all of their followers are fans, but they do follow friends who use twitters as commutation tool and when this happens, they have to manage on their own. That's when they follow only less than 100 people but have 100K followers, you can see it. Such in the case of @jeweljk http://twitter.com/jeweljk

[GT Bulmer]

Hello, Takuya:

Again, thanks for the great insight. I am going to start paying a bit closer attention to some of the celebrities to see if I can get a feel for who is authentic and who has stand-ins.

I think it is important for a celebrity to be as authentic as possible, but I can see the challenges in doing so while still managing their time effectively.

GT

[David Hurley]

Hi,
I'm fairly new to bringing my business online, so I am doing a lot of research into the best way to market. I've heard that using Facebook and Twitter are very powerful. I think I sort of understand why...but I'd really like to know everyone else's opinons. Also what is working for you? What tools should I use? What should I put on my Facebook page or what kinds of things should I tweet about? And how can I get followers?

Thanks all....

Rachel

Hi Rachel,

1. Write articles and include your keywords in the title and main body, and post them on article directories. Don't forget to add some information about your business plus a link to it in the signature file.

2. Start a blog.

Each time you post a blog or an article you can tweet it, and bookmark on a bookmarking site such as http://misterwong.com/ .

3. Sure, start a Facebook page and post some information about your business and the niche market you serve. Link back to your website. Whenever you post an article etc mention it on facebook and link back to it.

4. To get Twitter followers, use: http://tweeterGetter.com/hirohurl , http://twollo.com , http://tweetbeep.com . Use Tweetbeep to find people who use your keywords on Twitter, then follow those people.

You can also follow the followers of your followers or of the people you are following. Many of them will follow you back, but of course they may not be interested in your niche market...!

5. What to tweet about? Keep people informed about your niche market. Post to interesting links other than your own. Then when you post an article or a blog post, feel free to tweet it and add a link. People get tired of Twitter users who only post links back to their own site, so mix in a lot of other stuff as well and you'll be ok.

Hope that helps,

DH

[Alan Mater]

Hi Rachel,

I'm a member and active user of both Twitter and Facebook, but more so of Facebook. Yes, there is a lot of power between the two when used correctly. The nice thing is that you can link the two by having your Twitter tweets show up on your status updates on Facebook. This alone is powerful as my tweets get responses from my Facebook friends, who are potential business partners or clients.

One thing with Facebook is setting up a group about you, your product, or your business. As you build up targeted friends you can invite them to your group and build a reputation for yourself. This is kind of the same angle you want to use with Twitter as you tweet about your niche.

Another aspect of using Twitter and Facebook is setting them up to automatically post a link and description of your blog posts. As others have mentioned, you should set up a blog and post content relative to your niche. As you can see by setting both sites up like this, part of your marketing efforts are on autopilot.

This is just a small example of what's possible, and do read over the other suggestions that you were given because they are great as well.

Hope that helps and best wishes,

Alan

[juliasmith]

Stumble upon and My space is can make a great contribution in increasing the traffic of your website.

[hme2779]

When it comes to using social media, I personally have to get a "feel" for the site before I know it's a right fit for me. You can read about sites and watch what others are doing, but in my opinion you should just get your feet wet and decide as you are trying each site out. Every site has its own flair, and sometimes that's not apparent to you until you've joined.

[Alan Mater]

When it comes to using social media, I personally have to get a "feel" for the site before I know it's a right fit for me. You can read about sites and watch what others are doing, but in my opinion you should just get your feet wet and decide as you are trying each site out. Every site has its own flair, and sometimes that's not apparent to you until you've joined.

Great insight! I agree that not every site is going to appeal to everyone, and that we need to decide and maybe "test" which sites are going to have the most potential in terms of what we want to accomplish by using them.

[GT Bulmer]

... You can read about sites and watch what others are doing, but in my opinion you should just get your feet wet and decide as you are trying each site out...

Hello:

I agree. I used to try to fit into sites recommended by other people but I soon found out that some of them just weren't for me. There were a couple of social sites where it just felt awkward and clumsy to use and navigate and the results never materialized.

I was never able to warm up to StumbleUpon. On the other hand, Twitter works well for me because of its ease of use and format.

GT

[awarepoint]

I had to research Facebook a bit more than I normally would, to help a local non-profit organization decide how to use it for marketing purposes.

I learned some interesting things. You can have your own personal profile page, which works great if you are an entrepreneur, but you can also start 2 other types of pages:

1) A fan page -- you can create an unlimited amount, as long as you are an official member of the business or organization

2) A group page -- which can be centered around any issue, business, or cause. But it's more limited than a fan page in several ways, and it's mostly for other Facebook members to interact on

Anyway, just thought I would share that since it took me a while to finally wrap my head around how I will want to use Facebook for my own business in the future.

[Alan Mater]

I had to research Facebook a bit more than I normally would, to help a local non-profit organization decide how to use it for marketing purposes.

I learned some interesting things. You can have your own personal profile page, which works great if you are an entrepreneur, but you can also start 2 other types of pages:

1) A fan page -- you can create an unlimited amount, as long as you are an official member of the business or organization

2) A group page -- which can be centered around any issue, business, or cause. But it's more limited than a fan page in several ways, and it's mostly for other Facebook members to interact on

Anyway, just thought I would share that since it took me a while to finally wrap my head around how I will want to use Facebook for my own business in the future.

Hi Cynthia,

Very good observations. This is one reason why I like Facebook so much; there are features available that make networking, socializing and marketing easy and effective. I plan to make use of these features in the near future as well.