Whether you are new to using social media or have 1000 people following you on Twitter and 800 Facebook friends, business owners and professionals want to know what they can do to benefit from social media. Common questions are:
Which social media method has been most successful for professional or business owners in my field?
How can social media help give me gain more recognition and reinforce my credibility with my clients and customers?
Do blogs, tweets, videos and updates help us market our products or services or do clients find them distracting?
Using social media as a marketing tool is a very important factor for today's business owner and professional. First it is a very natural approach to get exposure to your website and in a spontaneous manner. This is much different from paid advertising which has commercial overtones.
Secondly, it is defensible because once your know how to use social media the social communities can be a source of traffic for your website.
Thirdly, using social media is a low cost approach to marketing and has the possibility of high returns. In fact, if done by yourself, costs are limited to your time.
And finally, your social media efforts complement your other efforts because it is community specific and does not interfere with your other approaches to getting traffic to your website. You can use it to target other websites and search engines.
According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael Stelzner, 64% of marketers spend 5 hours or more using social media and 39% spend 10 hours or more weekly. The general consensus of these marketers is that social media marketing generates more exposure for business plus it increases traffic and builds new business partnerships.
It seems that everyone wants to know more about social media. Showing that you have some experience with the different media. If you have to make small talk at a meeting or a cocktail party, for instance, start a conversation about tweeting and making friends. People will gravitate to you.
There are some who consider Social Networking a complete waste of time. And it is true, some will spend hours tweeting and flipping around to different groups on Facebook. Others use it strictly as a personal social network staying in touch with friends and family.
If you are in business, however, learn to make social networking an integral part of your internet presence. One of your goals may be to build your opt in subscriber list to an event your giving. You can invite people locally, 1000 miles away from you or in another country because the social media are global in their membership.
Keep in mind, however, that anything you publish on these social networks is accessible by others. Thus includes your family, friends and your clients so you may want to write everything with a casual tone, but keep it at a professional level. As for photos, make sure they are decent enough to show to your daughter's kindergarten teacher.
Besides Facebook and Twitter, Blogs are a very efficient way to add content to your site. You can drive traffic to your site from links on your blog and you can promote your business from the blog. Sharing links on your blog is a good way in increase website traffic. If you are linking to other websites take special caution so that nothing too provocative is seen on the other blog. You don't want to associate yourself or your business with something that will offend others.
In the meantime, visit the forums on Facebook and start communicating with people. Just be wise about what you say.
Author Resource:-
Ruthan Brodsky helps people in midlife change the direction of their career or provession by making money on the Internet. Receive notices of free teleseminars on marketing at From Retirement To Career Change
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.freebie-articles.com/images/rss.gif "XML Feed For RSS")
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites