Social Networking or Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is not social media networking. Most people are familiar with online social networking, but that is only the beginning when it comes to marketing online.
Social media marketing is how you allow potential prospects to find you. Once that happens, you will use social media networking to build relationships with those prospects who may ultimately become customers or join you in your business.
Social networking is fun, but serious Social Media Marketing can be a bit intimidating to some when starting out, particularly because it’s such a broad term, and can be done in so many ways.
Social Media Marketing in Network Marketing Begins with Promoting Yourself
This is a relationship business. And building your brand online means that you have to promote yourself.
You do this in order to build relationships, so this means that you need to be preparing your profiles on social networks that you intend to use, where you will reach your target market.
In the beginning this can be just simply creating your profile and building your presence, allowing people to get to know you, and what you have to offer. Social media marketing doesn’t imply that you absolutely must be an expert.
Promoting yourself also does not mean that you must come off as “it’s all about me”. It is about just being yourself. Enhance your profiles and blogs with pictures, videos, favorite quotes and posts about what you enjoy. Allow people to get to know YOU.
You can and should offer something of value, even if it is just entertaining, educational, or enlightening. Don’t start with spamming about your biz-op or product!
Some people may perceive promoting themselves as something which should be reserved to those who are already successful, or good looking. But this is not true.
You are going to attract people to you for being open and forthright, for building trust. Some people do not even have a profile picture posted, what’s up with that!
Most people are beautiful and exude confidence when they just smile!
The last thing you want to do is appear to be a salesperson, pushing some product or opportunity, for two reasons. First, no one likes to be sold, and you will turn off any prospects when you start off with your pitch.
Secondly, you will sound like so many others that do this, that you’ll be completely ignored for being an armature. Social media marketing won’t work if it starts with spam.
Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business
If you are interested in using social media marketing, then you should grow your network in your target market to the extent that it will be possible for potential prospects to find you.
Then, once you begin to provide valuable content, they will hopefully return, and even propagate your content to their own networks.
But these things take some time, however, given the initial investment in creating that content and building your networks, the payoff will last as long as the market is solvent.
Where Do You Start?
- Identify Your Target Market
The first thing to do in any marketing plan, including social media marketing, is to determine your target market. This is crucial to both building your personal brand, your content, and in which networks you will want to put your effort.
Different social networks will enable you in many cases to be more targeted toward one audience or demographic. Forums and groups are often very specific niche groups It is in these networks and groups that you must create your online presence.Don’t over extend yourself in the beginning. Select only 2 or 3 networks or groups to work with until you are well established and things are going smoothly. Use the targeted keywords in your profile, join related groups and forums, etc.
- Create Your Content
You will want to be creating some content which will be of value to your target market. This will be your blog or web page that will also lead to your sales funnel, which for a network marketer will be an exchange of personal information (name, email and phone number) for something of value that you have to offer.Some of your content may be from forum posts or articles that you publish in online groups. The content can be re-used or copied to your blog, in its original form or expanded upon. It may even be links to others’ content.If you have a blog or web page which provides information about your service, make sure that it has content that is Educational, Entertaining, or Enlightening, or all of the above.
It should be engaging enough in the onset to maintain your reader’s interest. Update your content by adding new posts at least twice a week to keep it up to date (Google will appreciate this and reward your increased SEO with higher rankings, i.e. placement on search results pages).
- Link Your Content to Your Networking Profiles
Build links from your social networking profiles that point to your blog or web page (your central hub). These links could be directly to the capture page, but should not be. Links should mostly be to elements of content that will provide the type of value that you intend to offer as part of your social media marketing process.
When you have the framework and initial content prepared for your central hub, increase your personal network in to the thousands by connecting with people in that market. Begin by just making initial contacts and eventually making friends.
Utilizing groups is a good way to connect with people in your niche. Connect with other members, comment on their posts , provide good content, and make yourself known. Thank anyone for comments and input on your posts as well. The group members will eventually take notice of you and explore your links if they are interested.
Your Goal is Trust
Only after you have gained the trust of your audience, will they consider doing business with you, or giving you their personal information to receive more of what you have to offer. It begins with personal interaction, and ends with trust.
And to be sure you do that, follow the Top Ten Rules of Social Media Marketing.
Trust can be made over time, but broken in short order if you abuse the privilege of someone’s attention. Don’t waste your work accomplished in building your network by spamming people, posting your business proposition on their personal profile page or by filling their inbox with unsolicited product and opportunity information!
Enjoy the benefit of getting to know so many people that you may never have had the chance to know before without the advent of social media and online social networking. The world is continually getting smaller, and we can only enrich one another’s lives by simply knowing each other!
And always remember that you are unique and therefore have much to offer -
“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Oscar Wilde
Social Media Marketing is as much about building your brand as it is about marketing your product, service or opportunity!
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Great post Vicki!
You expertly encompass what a lot of us are trying to do. Especially the “be yourself” message.
It’s great to make friends out of strangers, and this is exactly what Seth Godin has commented on this weekend!
More power to you for making it easy to understand why!
Thanks
H
June 29, 2009 5:03 AM
Thanks so much for the kind words Howard! Your feedback means a lot, I’m glad I conveyed my message as well as intended.
Yes it is wonderful making friends out of strangers! Social networking provides an incredible opportunity for that.
Wishing you every happiness and success!
Vicki
Definitely the trust factor and building relationships are some of the most important factor to successful social media mkting…thx for the article Vicki.
I love this entire article, but love the end the most.
You are unique. Therefor your content will be unique.
Many people don’t want to produce content in a certain field because it is somewhat flooded.
Don’t let that stop you from producing something on the same topic. Your unique style and thoughts will make it your own and your networked friends would rather read something from you than someone they don’t know.
I know I would read my friends review on a product over some Jo Blows review on a product that I don’t know.
Thank you Kelsi! I will take that to heart and continue writing!
To your enormous success,
Vicki
Social Media Marketing is really the trend these days. i market most of my products through social networking sites.
You`ve already become a good and trusted friend.i look forward to your wisdom in writing.
Thanks so much Sidney, it means a lot to me to have your friendship and support! Stay in touch!
One thing that needs to be kept in consideration is the impact that your chosen persona has on your target audience as well. Most (including myself) would say undoubtedly, if your persona is not matched to your market, you simply will not be able to promote yourself through social media.
Thanks Ryan,
Sometimes we sell ourselves a bit short though – I was such an incredible introvert years back but have worked on my interpersonal and communication skills for a while to the point that I think I’ve improved quite a bit. Given what you have set your goals toward and if you truly love the dream enough, then some amount of personal development skills are sometimes a must!
Thank you for this article. i am learning more and more from your articles.
thanks
Thanks for this Vicki. It’s a great post. I’m prepping for a job interview tomorrow and I this all applies. It’s about building relationships and being authentic.
“The last thing you want to do is appear to be a salesperson, pushing some product or opportunity, for two reasons. First, no one likes to be sold, and you will turn off any prospects when you start off with your pitch. Secondly, you will sound like so many others that do this, that you’ll be completely ignored for being an armature.”
Great post, I would suggest that you make it a bit more convenient to add this to some social media sites, throw up a big add to twitter button or something in a few places that are obvious. No sense in making it too much work to add your stuff. Also, I really like your comment layout here, is it the default setup for your theme or did you customize it?
Yes thanks for the feedback, I have been wanting to add the larger buttons (there are small ones at the bottom of the post) but am waiting to do my upgrade of wordpress before that. As for the theme, it is a free one, not customized. The link is on the right near the bottom. Thanks!
Great post, Vicki! Thanks for sharing!
It is all about being yourself, isn’t it? We are all experts at something! We all have something to offer and share. However, at times, we try to be something that we are not… and, what comes around goes around!
Love your website! I will be back!
~Andrea
Thanks Andie! Yes we really should be authentic, genuine and transparent! It’s all about building know-like-and-trust. The investment is well worth the time it takes!!
Have an awesome weekend!
Vicki
Great post Vicki! Looking forward to reading more!
Thanks Benjamin! Come back soon!
)
Wishing You All the Best,
Hey Vicky love the post some good points made that people need to make themselves aware of. Effective social media marketing techniques generate opportunities and prospects for your business. If you have an internet site, then a social media marketing company will be more cost effective in order to reach out to your market.
Social media marketing campaigns can do more things for your company, that work can’t done by other strategies. Reaching out to targeted and qualified prospects where they are most receptive to your messages is important. This is because you can loosely promote and advertise your products and services in small niche networking sites and targeted sections and groups of larger sites where people that would be interested in what you sell already visit.
You’re actively participating in a community and not jut spouting off sales pitches or commercials, your messages will be received better than they could be anywhere else. The positive outcome involved here is the increased traffic to your site of potential buyers and probable sales growth.
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks you, and thanks for for your added value here! You’re right, social media campaigns are very powerful when delivered appropriately to the right niche communities. They are a good way to generate opportunities, lots of positive outcomes are possible!
Good to see you, thanks for stopping by!
Wishing You Continued Success,
