Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Manta, and the millions of others out there are platforms for reaching people. Not everyone knows how to use a search engine or even likes to use search engines, but people love to write to their friends, express their opinions, and share photos and memories with the people they love. Most of these people have jobs or work for companies and spend more than 5 hours a day outside their homes, they tell their friends where they work and post it as their job on their profiles and ultimately lead people to to their company’s profile page. At this point, having a strong presence is crucial, because people are likely to visit your company’s social media pages, whether they are packed with information or not. If you are the owner, office worker, manager, or any other type of employee responsible for attracting new business, then social media is the way to go. Take the time to read books, read forums, read the help community support pages, and create a profile page for your company that makes money and constantly offers new updates.
Facebook is perhaps the most powerful social networking site, with an estimated value of $84 billion or more. Facebook allows its members to create, customize, and post to their user profiles that are set up with email addresses and passwords. Looking at the framework of what a user sees when browsing while logged in, there are three columns, one column has their personal links, friends, photos, mail, pages connected to them, and apps; the second column is a constantly updated wall that displays your friends’ posts and updates, as well as your own updates; The last column is the most important for business owners, this column contains the Sponsored Stories and Sponsored Ads that make Facebook possible.
The third column, located on the right hand side inside a Facebook profile, is where businesses have the ability to be recognized by posting an ad through Facebook Insight, Facebook’s advertising option. This advertising program allows you to customize your ad, target specific areas or age groups, and designate a budget. The trick to these types of ads is to narrow your focus to include proven sales tactics, like if there’s a certain age group you notice is more likely to buy from you, it’s best to start by targeting these people first.
Another advantage of Facebook for any business is the ability to add inbound links to your website. To better understand this, go to Google, type [link:www.youdomainname.com] replacing “yourdomainname.com” with your company’s domain name and click search. You will see very limited results showing only those websites or organizations that link to your website. This is important for Google to see when deciding if you are relevant to appear on the first page of a search result. When you add Facebook to these results, your relevance boosted by 800 million users will start to help your website get a small jump in your search engine rankings.
While there are many great features to look forward to when using Facebook, there are also some other great social sites to consider. Hire a tech to manage your account for you, or be sure to read as much as you can about the power of Facebook.
LinkedIn is a great place for business owners and professionals to market, network, recruit, hire, discuss, and share. LinkedIn differs from Facebook in that it doesn’t allow multiple images, doesn’t actually promote an ad system, instead uses multiple membership types, and LinkedIn allows professionals to specify their credentials, experience, and business focus as the primary reason for joining. . This social site appears to have been designed with business professionals in mind, with the goal of networking business-to-business, or business-to-employee of another business.
Linked in Offers updatable profiles so that companies have the best Linked in experience. These updated profiles have the ability to see users visiting your profile, send direct messages, and much more. Plus, just like Facebook, Linked in gives you another inbound link to your business website and a proactive way to reach out to your customers when you want to share industry news, amazing specials, promotions, and changes.
Within the framework of a linked profile, you will find several options. At the top, the navigation includes news, profile settings, contacts, groups, jobs, inbox, companies, and an option for more. On the right side, you’ll find People you can meet, tools, profile view count, connections (friends), and much more. On the left side you have your updates for you and your connections. This structure is conducive to establishing new business connections and finding new ways to promote and publicize your company and its products or services. This is the ultimate social site for business owners and business professionals and it definitely deserves attention.
Can you say what you need to say in 140 characters or less? Twitter is another unique social site that uses the principle that anything over 140 characters or less is useless or junk. This framework allows you to add a single image and follow profiles, as well as allow profiles to follow you. It doesn’t sound like Twitter is a good way to promote your business, but the point is to invite people to your website! Write short and sweet updates that end in the link to your website. Use this platform to add additional fuel to your website marketing plan and engage on a personal level with your customers. Twitter for Business is all about image branding. The platform allows the company to brand its image in front of the public and create HYPE that really helps attract customers.
Read the information about Twitter for business and start taking advantage of the tools that Twitter offers.
YOUTUBE
Blogging has become a very popular ritual for companies, but podcasting is also becoming a new trend. Podcasting, posting a video blog, is the perfect way to engage masses of fans who want to learn more about your company by having a one-on-one visual interaction with your company. YouTube allows you to upload your podcasts, tag them, add descriptions and share them very easily on your blog or website. The beauty of YouTube is in its ability to manage the weight of your video files and save space on your server, create a channel for you to share with your fans, and help your website get even more exposure than it currently has. . To make effective use of YouTube, you need to have videos to upload and share, and continue to create and share videos or podcasts as often as possible. This helps your visual customers, who may not be able to read or prefer not to read, also have the opportunity to learn more about your company, your products, and gather information before they buy.
Another less commonly used YouTube method is the ability to simply add audio from your website recording yourself or a designated employee reading the content of your page. Again, not everyone in the world can read or understand what they read, so the ability to share your content by recording it and linking to the video on your website is a wonderful way to make sure it’s understood.
OTHER SOCIAL SITES
Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Manta, MySpace and many more social sites are also available to promote your business and link to your website. The more you actively engage in supporting your brand, products and services, the better chance you have of producing massive amounts of traffic that can be turned into money! Research the different types of social sites and their pros and cons to see what will work and consistently build a social media network for your business. This will help your website and eventually your business become a household name in your industry. It is said that if a person sees something twenty-five times or more, they are more likely to remember that company when they need a service you offer, so make sure you make this possible for as many people as possible. It only takes a few hours a week and MTK Designs is here to help if you’re in the market for social media marketing or search engine marketing to supercharge your online business.
