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How to get business from social networking

Written by: Helen Dowling

Article Overview: Social networking a.k.a. the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Ecademy, LinkedIn and so on have become the new marketing buzzwords. Everyone is interested in finding out about them and knowing how to use them to get business in through the door.

How to get business from social networking

Social networking a.k.a. the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Ecademy, LinkedIn and so on have become the new marketing buzzwords. Everyone is interested in finding out about them and knowing how to use them to get business in through the door.

So, if you're interested and want to use them in your business, where should you start? Here's my top ten tips:

• 1) Don't expect to see clients immediately. Social networking is a long term strategy. It's about relationship building. The more people see you adding information and content to online networking sites, the more people will get to know you and want to do business with you.

• 2) New social networking sites are springing up all the time, so don't expect to keep up with all of them. Choose 3-4 to keep on top of and work on these. That means setting up your profile and regular posting on there so that people can get to know you.

• 3) Write a generic profile of your business and about you on Word and then use it on all of the social networking sites you're going to try out. That way, if you get invited to start using another one, your profile is already written.

• 4) Link your social networking sites as much as possible. By that I mean, use sites like Pingto help you manage all of your sites. That way, you can post on one site i.e. Twitter and have the content automatically sent to all of the other social networking sites you're using.

• 5) Write as much content as you can. Put your articles on there, give your opinion or views on topics and write down tips. You can write absolutely anything on social networking sites, so get creative.

• 6) Write as often as you can. It's no good setting everything up and then ignoring it. For social networking to work for you people have to get to know you and that means you need to write as often as you can i.e. at least once a day.

• 7) Use tools likeTweet Laterto set up posts in advance. That way, even if you can't physically post something, packages like this will do it for you.

• 8) Remember to find out about other people. It's not just all about you. Contact some of the people that request you add them as friends and find out about them. The more you build that relationship, the more likely it is that people will want to do business with you.

• 9) Very often on social networking sites, groups of like-minded individuals and businesses have been set up. That means it's easy to find all the people interested in what you do. Join these groups and start participating. You never know what could happen.

• 10) Finally, please be careful out there. Remember that anyone can write anything on the web, so although you may be genuine, the person you're communicating with may not be. Take extra care when doing business on the internet.

Because all this is hard work, complicated and very, very new to the marketing world, I've just created a free factsheet on social networking. If you'd like a copy, please email me using the information in my bio.

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Article Tags: facebook, linkedin, marketing buzzwords, nbsp, new marketing, relationship, social networking sites, term strategy, ul



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Re: Owning a social network software...How is it?? - Hi, I am a big fan of social networking software (75% of our business) but what we constantly have to remind people is the concept of a social network has been around for ages. It just so happens MySpace & Facebook made the ability to do it free & online mainstream and the rest is history. Our company finds that pre-developed social networking applications do not create good internet business. The simple reason is a social network is not an internet business; all it is a group of link minded individuals that are able to communicate with one another through the medium you provide. A construction company can build an office building...but that does not make it a profitable business. You need to (1) build your business and (2) build social networking software features around that business. So my advice to you, just like facebook.com opened up their code, make your social networking software open so ANYONE can modify it to meet their needs. Jeff
Re: Owning a social network software...How is it?? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1ckdc0r2]Hi, I am a big fan of social networking software (75% of our business) but what we constantly have to remind people is the concept of a social network has been around for ages. It just so happens MySpace & Facebook made the ability to do it free & online mainstream and the rest is history. Our company finds that pre-developed social networking applications do not create good internet business. The simple reason is a social network is not an internet business; all it is a group of link minded individuals that are able to communicate with one another through the medium you provide. A construction company can build an office building...but that does not make it a profitable business. You need to (1) build your business and (2) build social networking software features around that business. So my advice to you, just like facebook.com opened up their code, make your social networking software open so ANYONE can modify it to meet their needs. Jeff[/quote:1ckdc0r2] We were talking about this on another thread. There are plenty of social networks online, so it seems at this point if a person plans to start a new network - what makes them special or unique? What will be their approach to entice people to join and more importantly to participate on a regular basis? Chris
Re: Social Networking and You - Hello David, Thank you for this post, you have given some great information on where we can expect this industry to go and I found it both fascinating and a bit worrying. The thought of having to completely re-focus our efforts on social networks and putting less emphasis on the traditional methods will I am sure test all our resources and tenacity if this comes true. It will be interesting to see how social networking develops in the coming years but you have given a very good overview on what we can expect. I agree that at the moment social networking is barely scratching the surface in comparison to what it can and will become. regards, Mal.
Why women's networking associations fail - I've been involved in a lot of women's networking associations in leadership positions and have found that most of them are failing or struggling. WHy? Because no matter how good the idea, most fail to recognize that 1) volunteer run associations are essentially trying to herd cats. most volunteers have great intentions and very little work ethic when it comes to getting things done. 2) women, especially those who are new in business, forget that men still run the world, so by limiting their exposure to only women's groups, they lose out on all the other great resources and ideas available to them. 3) women naturally become social creatures. while some bits of business actually go around, most networking groups become social clubs by virtue of the way women interact with each other. These are just some of the reasons. I'd like to hear what other women think... TheRainmaker
Re: Best looking social networking site? - Hi Kevin [quote:3h76yt08]With so many social networking sites to pick and choose from, what influences your decision to join a particilar site? Is it just your friends, the content, people using it or looks??[/quote:3h76yt08] For me, the most essential criteria in selecting a Social Networking Site is its Content followed closely by popularity- in terms of daily visitors. Then comes the Content followed by the Friends and looks. Most of do social networking to attract traffic to their website(s) and as such the Content and Popularity of the site are important. btw, the list doesn't have digg or netscape or del.is.us which are the top social media sites.


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