Social Networking Sites – A Right Way And A Wrong Way!

Have you been on facebook lately? Do you see all those people promoting stuff? Ya so have I and let me just tell you most of the folks promoting are doing it wrong. Social networking sites requires more of a hands on approach.

Social networking can be one of your best assets, you will have much more success with social networking sites if you try and make friends with someone first.

Social Networking Sites -  Tips!

Tip # 1: When it comes to successfully using social networking sites one of the biggest mistakes that many marketers make is that they are too focused on making money and not enough on socializing. As an end result they unknowingly spam their followers which often ends up in getting your posts ignored, blocked or even banned.

When it comes to social networking sites it’s very important that you use social networking sites as they were intended (to socialize), especially if you want to see any real results from your efforts. Always remember to socialize first and promote second! When you do this you will have no problem attracting hundreds, maybe even thousands of happy fans, friends and followers that will be interested in what you have to offer!

Tip#2: When it comes to social networking sites the most important thing you should do is to spend time socializing. This should be obvious, but too many marketers skip this vital
component when using social media to advertise their wares. While it may take a bit of time to socialize, it is an important step of the process, because people aren’t willing to pay attention to you and your marketing messages if they don’t know who you are. You must make sure that you socialize with your friends fans and followers, especially if you want them to respond to your marketing message. Think about it this way for a minute.

– Who would you trust more?

– The opinion of your friend, family, coworker

– Or the opinion of salesperson you just met.

The simple fact is that people will be much more likely to buy what you recommend if they trust you and you can earn their trust by socializing with them, letting them get to know you, only recommending quality products and posting useful information on a regular basis.

Tip #3: Marketing on Facebook is fairly easy, but there are several different ways to go about it. The easiest way is by setting up fan pages, so that people can click the “like” button and follow your updates. It’s important that your fan page has a purpose if you want it to be successful. You must have a specific plan for your pages because people won’t click that button unless they like what they see.

Once you have created a great looking fan page make sure that you regularly post tips, gifts and links to videos on the page to keep people coming back to read and comment often. You can even run contest to encourage participation. If you are stuck for ideas just login to your Facebook account and do a search for your top keywords and see what others in your market are doing on their fan pages.

Tip#4: When you are trying to market your products or services successfully with social media, one very important thing that you should always do is
posting useful and interesting information on a regular basis. This actually has two major benefits;

1. It makes people like you, because people love getting free stuff.

2. It establishes you as an expert, because it proves you know what
you’re talking about within your niche.

While you can’t always post a lot of information on some of the social networking sites themselves, you can create helpful posts, free reports and ebooks then post it on your blog and use one of the many free applications available to update to all of your social networking sites  profiles at one time letting all of your followers and fans know about the new content. By doing this on a regular basis you will build your reputation of someone that really know what they are talking about.

Tip#5: When it comes to promoting products and services with social networking sites there is no magic ratio when it comes to the amount of ads versus the amount of content that you put out there. It can vary from niche to niche, and also based on your target market demographic.

Some markets will respond kindly to a 2 to 1 ratio of content versus advertising messages, while other markets will become extremely angry if they get a marketing message for every two content posts. A good way to play it safe is ratio of at least 5 to 1. By posting at least five quality content messages for every one marketing message, you will make it much easier for people to deal with the marketing, and they will pay more attention, too!

Tip#6: Marketing on Twitter is very easy, but you must be aware that it doesn’t always yield the desired result unless it is done properly. Twitter marketing has to be approached in a completely different way than other forms of advertising because Twitter limits the size of posts to just 140 characters. This means you must keep your posts very short.

This means you can’t ramble on endlessly. You have to get to the point and do it in away that peeks your followers interest and get them to click! It’s a very good idea to read your Twitter page daily and respond to messages that your followers post. By interacting with them directly, you can establish friendships. This is very important, because your followers can “re-tweet” (RT) your messages to their own followers, potentially allowing you to reach a
wider audience.

Tip #7: Contests are a fantastic way to get a lot of people to join your fan page! People really enjoy entering contests, especially if they are easy to enter and have great prizes. You can even specifically state that the prize will be awarded when you hit a certain number of followers. This way you can get people post the contest to their wall in order to get more entries, which will help the contest go viral. That way you don’t have to award the prize unless you reach your target number of followers.

Just be sure to keep the target number realistic, otherwise people won’t enter because they will feel the contest is a scam. Another great way to use contests for marketing is to actually give away one of whatever you are selling.  If you have your own product, this is even more effective. Your entire contest can revolve around giving away a copy of your product, which will bring a lot of publicity and recognition
to the product.

Tip #8: Did you know that MySpace was the first really massive social network? It literally gained millions of users its first few months online. Their format was simple, but effective, and their growth was an internet phenomenon. Unfortunately, their rules made it very difficult for marketers to use the site without getting banned. Even a hint of marketing could sometimes attract the ban hammer, so it became very tricky to use them for marketing purposes.

However you can still market on MySpace, but you have to be careful. One easy way to market to people on MySpace is to simply direct people to your blog whenever you make a blog post. This usually won’t get you banned, although it can if you are too obvious.
Once you get people to your blog, you’re free to market to them however you choose.

Tip #9: LinkedIn is a business network that is meant primarily for business professionals as a place to connect with one another and market tier products and services in a (B2B) business to business environment. It’s a great way to connect and network with business owners and people in a mutually beneficial way! You can add links to your websites, blogs and other social profiles.

You can also set up groups that are similar to Facebook fan pages, and you can also have other recommend your services in exchange for you recommending theirs. LinkedIn also has a lot of authority on Google and other popular search engines. If you currently have a LinkedIn profile, try doing a search for yourself on Google. There is a good bet that it will show up on the first page of results. That is authority ranking and you don’t want to miss out on it!

Social Networking Sites – Wrap Up!

The bottom line is this, there really is a right way and wrong way to use social networking sites. I am constantly seeing peeps use these mediums the wrong way.  I am talking thousands of people. What this really means is there is a literal fortune to be made on social networking sites for a person who puts in the extra effort to do it the right way.  While the obvious advantage is it is free marketing, you still need to take the time and develop real relationships within these social networking sites.