The world has gone social and if your company isn’t utilizing social marketing, you’re missing out on a huge boost in traffic, overall attention and revenue. Ever since people have done business with one another, they’ve engaged in social networking. In the past, people would travel to conferences and seminars and meet-and-greets, sometimes across continents, just to expand their social networks. Today, you never have to leave the home or office to engage in successful social marketing. With a computer, tablet or even smartphone, you can find social marketing success and you’ll soon see that it’s just the key to success you’ve been searching for.
Why Social Marketing Works
As an Internet marketer, you should be interested in the fact that the search engines have gone social. Google, especially, is paying strict attention to its own Google+ social network, as well as to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others. The search engines are always interested in delivering high-quality content. They figure that high-quality content will always be popular on social networks, and thus the content that gets passed from one social network to another gets extra ranking juice. So if you can get your materials passed around, you just might see social marketing success in the form of higher rankings and more search engine and social marketing traffic.
The most important reason to find social marketing success is because so many people are using social networks. Facebook alone has close to a billion users, and Twitter and Google+ are steadily catching up. With so many users logging on daily, it just makes sense to create social networking profiles so that you can always remain in your prospects’ and customers’ good graces.
How To Find Social Marketing Success
The first rule of social marketing is to be social. You are not here to sell. If you come out of the gate trying to sell to every friend and follower you meet, you will quickly become ostracized and possibly banned altogether. Nobody wants to be sold to on social networks. They want to socialize, so that’s what you should do if you hope to engage in successful social marketing.
Profile Creation
In the old days of social networking, if you wanted to know more about someone at a seminar or convention, you would have to walk up to that person and introduce yourself. These days you only have to click on a person’s profile. If you are hiring for a job and you’re looking on LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, you only have to click on a user’s profile to see their entire resume, associations and anything else you may want to know. Keep this concept in mind when creating your own social network profiles if you hope to find social marketing success.
When creating your profile, consider that anyone landing on it might be a potential business partner, client or customer. What would they like to know about you prior to doing business with you? What actions do you want these profile visitors to take? These are the types of questions you’ll want to ask yourself as you fill out each element of your social marketing profiles.
To help you find social marketing success, here are some profile creation tips you’ll want to keep in mind.
Title, Headline And Primary Photo
When you engage in social networking at a physical location like a seminar, you usually wear a suit so that you can appear as professional as possible. It’s all about putting your best foot forward and showing the world that you’re serious about what you’re doing. Looking professional will also draw people to you because they’ll want to know how you got to be so successful.
Think of this same concept when creating your profile title, headline and when choosing your primary photo. At a convention, you’d want to wear the best looking suit to really set yourself apart. Your title and headline should give no question as to what you do and what your goals are, and your primary photo should be so engaging that it draws new visitors in. Have professional photos taken to really stack your deck. Once your profile is created and checked to make sure it appeals to your primary audience, you’ll then want to make sure that your URL is prominently displayed.
Of course you always want people clicking on your profile, but why do you want them to click on your profile? You typically want your visitors to click-through to your website or other landing page, so make sure that URL is easy to find. If your posts are engaging enough, you won’t have to worry about traffic, because people will see your great posts, they’ll click-through to your profile and then they’ll click-through to your website. This is the chain reaction that you hope to start. Social marketing is going to be the catalyst to that reaction.
Social Marketing Made Easy
Creating your social networking profiles is the hard part. Social marketing success is going to rely on your postings and how often you post. Keep the following tips in mind and you’ll soon see that successful social marketing is not only easy, but it can also be fun.
Search Function: Most social networks have a handy search function that allows you to find other like-minded users and brands. Use the search function to find friends and followers and be a little selective. Don’t just blanket add people to your social marketing profiles. You’ll find more success that way.
Regular Postings: You should be posting to every social network you join daily, every other day or at least twice per week. The idea is to keep your brand in the minds of your prospects and customers. If your profiles remain dormant for too long, you will be forgotten. Regular postings will help them remember you so that the next time they need your products and services, they’ll be more likely to come to you on the various social networks.
Answer Questions And Solve Problems: If you can help your friends and followers solve their problems and if you’re always answering their questions with wise and helpful advice, you’ll find social marketing success sooner rather than later. If you can prove to your audience that you are here to help and that you want nothing in return, you’ll go far as a social marketer.
It’s only when marketers make half-baked attempts at social marketing that they fall flat. If you use these tips and you remain consistent with valuable postings, your audience will soon accept you into their social circles. Then watch the traffic levels and your company’s overall revenue numbers shoot through the roof.
