High Yield Social Media Marketing Tips.!

What You Need to Know about Social Media Marketing?

Before discussing '

Social Media Marketing' tips, let's quickly delve on social media.

We have already seen What is “Social Media?”. I need to stress here the power and usefulness of social media, as a marketing strategy. So, I will again come up with some numbers. According to Nielsen Research, social networking has become the fourth most popular online activity, surpassing even email. Two-thirds of all Internet users regularly visit social networking sites.

Social Networking sites like, “Twitter” and “Facebook” commands a significant chunk of ‘Internet Traffic’, that has made Google to literally bring in the social traffic into their search algorithm.

A classic example would be Google +1, considered as Facebook’s Like button, but not really, or is it?

What You Will Read on this Page?

Social Media: Some Interesting Facts!
Setup Your Social Media in Five Steps
How to Gauge Your Customer’s Interest?
Establish Trust with Clever Profiling
Listen to Your Customers First
Is Your Information Relevant and add Value to Your Customers?
How to Make Your Presence Felt with Increased Credibility?

Related Reading:

Social Media Tools & Resources

> Up to Speed with Social Media <

Social Media Marketing:

In the U.S. alone, 142.1 million visits were recorded to a social networking site in December 2009.

Get this:

Now, Facebook has more than 500 million active users.
Half of those active users log in to Facebook every day - to put that 250 million daily visitor count in perspective, that’s almost equivalent to every man woman and child in the United States logging in to Facebook every single day.
Visitors spend an average of 7 hours per month on Facebook – more than 3 times as much time as they spend on Google.

Sourced from Perry Marshall’s Free Webinar on Facebook Marketing

Do you see the marketing opportunity here?

By engaging with customers through the various networking mediums, you can spread your marketing message to your target audience, establish an online reputation and cultivate a deeper relationship with your customer base.

OK. Let's see, how we can do this.

>Top<

As you probably know, Facebook is currently, the leading Social Networking site, and a craze with marketers, for a good reason. Facebook commands 20% of the entire Internet search population. But that is not what I want to stress here. I want you to take a look at the free videos on Facebook marketing, and a Social Media Blueprint, on how to generate huge targeted traffic, using Facebook, to your product/service website. Get it for FREE here…You owe me yet another one for this.

Social Media Marketing in

5 Steps

Is Facebook for You?

Do Your Due Diligence: Before implementing your "

Social Media Marketing" strategy, research thoroughly as to your customer interests. Which sites are most popular with your audience.

Do they hang out on Facebook or on Twitter? Are there any popular forums or blogs they tend to visit and comment on?

Major “Social Media” sites have search tools that allow you to search on your keywords, to find users and groups discussing similar or related products/services that you are in. To find forums and discussion boards, enter your keywords into Google with "discussion" or "forum" tacked at the end.

Google will point you to groups where your audience might be hanging out. Plug in your keywords into Google Blog Search, to locate blogs relevant to your business. Once you discover some good ones, remember to check their blog rolls (list of blogs with links in the sidebar, or on a separate page on their site), more places to check out. Spend time in the forums and other places.

Get to know the crowd. Participate in the discussions. See to it that, you are involved with your target group. Build trust and relationship, by providing quality information, without any sales pitch. It is not required to join every single group, that you discover.

I would advise that, you start with three or four to help you get your feet wet, and then expand your presence from there onwards.

>Top<

Profiling: Create an interesting profile on all of the social networking

sites that you join.

Here are some basic tips to follow:

---> A friendly picture of yourself (or your company logo).

---> Description of your business. Avoid any kind of sales pitch.

---> Your website address.

---> Your interest and passion. Again, no sales talk.

The point of all this, is to establish yourself as a real person. The key to succeed with

social media marketing. When you establish connection with other people, always maintain a warm, helpful and a professional stance.

Offer useful and high value advice and tips. Direct them to valuable resources. This way you will be doing justice to your social media marketing efforts and also to your target market, earning you loyal followers.

>Top<

Develop Good Listening Skills: After you sign up for some social networking site, the first thing that you will do is to listen. You will spoil the fun, if you initially approach your network with sales talk.

Spend some time reading posts, messages and tweets.

While you are thus engaged, seek answers for the following questions:

---> What are peoples' general interest and what are they really excited about?

---> What are the topics of discussion; Is there a common thread? What are the issues generally faced by them?

---> Are the current products addressing their issues? What is lacking? How can that be addressed? etc.

---> What are your market's biggest frustrations? What products/services are being discussed? Are the opinions about them positive/negative?

Thus, first listen to the voice. You'll get the drift.

Now you can enter the conversation with the right note. You'll also send the message that, you value the information and opinions of the people. And, you are there to offer advice and help, and not seeking to push your sales agenda..

>> Respond to people's questions and comments, and be appreciative of both good and bad product/service opinion.

>> Treat negative comments as an opportunity to gather more feedback and to improve user experience. Offer assistance and support and elicit ideas and recommendations.

>Top<

Provide Valuable and Relevant Information: First listen. Seek out the missing ingredients. Then step in, and fill in the vacuum. For this, you need to move with the current. Be in sync with their needs and requirements.

Social media

marketing is all about mixing, participating and providing help and high value information.

The last thing you want to do is, to pitch in with your product/service sales talk. The whole purpose of this exercise is to, establish credibility and trust. The rest will follow.

Here are some guidelines to follow:

---> Share your thoughts and ideas about your market/industry. This can be done through

blog posts, forums etc. Initiate discussions around your interest and ideas. Invite other people to share their thoughts.

---> Be transparent about your company information and mission. Share who you are, how you got started in your industry, and your passion for what you do and why you do it.

---> Broadcast new product releases, features, accolades etc.

---> Provide good and timely customer service, by posting common problems and solutions, product bulletins, training and tips for using your products etc.

Don't be scared to meet, discuss and resolve a customer's problem publicly, if they post it publicly. It's not a bad thing for customers to see that you stand behind your products, and that you're eager to solve their problems!

---> Provide customer testimonials with permission!. Share positive experiences with your products, like, how it helped to overcome problems, by using your products.

---> Introduce a fun atmosphere. Post games, contests, and interesting pictures or videos related to your products or service industry.

---> Special offers. A great way to keep your "social media" customers coming back for more. Very effective social media marketing strategy, to develop strong bond and relationship with your market audience.

But, tread this path carefully. Do not overdo your sales pitch. The best way to do this is, by providing a link with a discount code. Let your site do the 'social media marketing' by itself!

---> Always encourage feedback. Introduce questions, polls and surveys targeted towards your networking community or customers. This is a great market intelligence, to create very useful market research data, product feedback etc.

>Top<

Get Involved: Getting involved with various social networking groups, that are specific to your target market, is essentially the key in succeeding with social media marketing. If you want to build a loyal community on social networking sites, you have to focus on becoming a trusted resource, who is there to genuinely discuss various problems and offer valuable help.

Building that initial trust is very very important. This requires patience and drive to succeed. Think of this, like your long-term plan.

Is Facebook for You?

There are certain tools available to automate some or most part of this job. I will provide the information here, in my coming updates. The tool specifically focuses on forums and bulletin boards.

OK, let's continue with our discussion. You see, People are quite naturally drawn to those who care, share and provide valuable guidance. Your community will love you and look up for help and support. They will trust your recommendations and follow your advice.

On the other hand, if you just participate here and there, willy nilly, and neglect to provide useful and valuable information, you'll find yourself hard-pressed to establish a connection.

To make your social media marketing efforts payoff, you should implement the above steps in your marketing strategy. And remember not to spam the social networking sites, when you communicate with your audience.

It's perfectly fine to let people know what you do and what you have to offer. But 'do not' hit them with an overly sales pitch.

Some people head to social media websites, to make purchases. I am sure, you want to be around, as usual, with your helpful tone and manners. And guess what, these people who are seeking product or service recommendations, will take you for your words, thus placing your products/services at the top of everyone's list.

That's the power of social media

marketing!

Real Life Facebook Marketing Lessons

>Top<

I hope by now, you must have realized the power of

social media marketing and, probably you are itching to implement this marketing strategy. I am not done with social media marketing.

I want to provide another set of insider tips, that you can very easily incorporate into your marketing strategies.

You will find them on the "Social Media Tips

" page, very shortly.

I want you to share this website amongst your social media friends, but....only to those, who are serious marketers, and is looking to improve on their online marketing techniques. I will also invite you to share your success stories with social media marketing. I am working on an invite page, where I will provide all the details for your active sharing and participation.

Here is wishing you all success,

CHEERS!!!