So you've taken the leap into 'social media'. You have a Facebook page, and a twitter account. You are well on the way to marketing your business online, and have linked your website up to twitter and to your Facebook. You sit back, and wait for the sales surge - the increase in web traffic, even some 'likes' on Facebook.

And you wait. You wait some more. Nothing happening. What's going on, you think to yourself. maybe this social media stuff isn't all its cracked up to be. Just what do businesses have to do to be successful online? Whats the secret ? Read More

Now this first paragraph is full of questions, and rightly so, because social media is actually quite time consuming and hard work, if its done correctly. All marketing is, and it can be expensive, particularly if you get it wrong. Social media campaigns are no different. The one thing all successful marketing campaigns have in common, is that they engage with potential customers. If you don't do this with your use of social media, then you are wasting your time and the money this costs your business, just as if you ran a TV ad campaign and it was in a different language to that spoken by the viewers. Social media is a language all of its own and you need to learn to speak it in order to reach out to your customers.
Here are some important 'translations'..

1. Engage means have a conversation. Don't just fire out scheduled tweets containing only your marketing material. Have conversations with your followers. You'd do this with other prospects in face to face meetings wouldn't you ? Having online conversations builds up relationships. These relationships may then lead to doing some business, or referrals even.

2. Keep a blog. Yes, yes, I know you have a website. But its not the same. Whilst the website is your window to the world, which lets your products and services out to the world, its not that interactive. Your blog is like the telephone in your house. It allows two way communication. Short sweet posts letting folk know what you're up to. Folk will comment. You comment back, and comment on their blogs. You start to follow blogs using a reader such as iGoogle. You comment. Folk follow you back to your own blog. Result= conversations. you've engaged with your prospects. Of course, your blog contains links to your website. You tweet when you blog or comment. Again, traffic is driven to your blog and website.

3. Become a 'Guru'. Position yourself as an expert in your area of interest. Post tweets with links to informative articles and content. Answer questions on Twitter and blogs and follow others in your field, even if they are your competitors. People will start to turn to you if they have questions or queries about your field. You will soon become the acknowledged expert on twitter, believe me. You could run a weekly twitter quiz for your followers, with questions on your field of interest amongst the usual general knowledge stuff. Post 'top-tips' on Facebook, and tweet them as well. Search out internet forums, comment on them, linking back to your blog, facebook, and twitter with each post. This will generate lots of traffic. Offer help to followers thats exclusive to them. Listen and respond. Post articles on Ezine (www.ezine.com) with links back to your sites, of course.

You are now their online instant Guru...

4. Curate content. You've written those informative blog posts on your specialist area, and have your website. You're the guru on twitter and Facebook for your specialism. Now spread your social media wings a little and collect similar content for your field. Social bookmarking is the next stage in your social media journey. Use Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon to save content links. You can tweet from all these bookmarking sites, and so do the double whammy of collecting and distributing content at the same time, generating tweets and keeping the conversation going. Add hashtags to your tweets so that others can follow the conversations. Folk with similar interests will follow you on Delicious and the others and so you create a new audience. More prospects=more potential business and referrals.

5. Having done all the above, offer something extra. Use a contact form on your blog and website to gather email addresses of interested followers. This is a 'call to action'. You are using your social media activity to build an electronic mailing list. You write a monthly newsletter which is exclusively for this list of contacts. Another great way to spread the word about what you do and can offer them. Make sure its full of interesting content and guest articles, but is also a vehicle to promote your own business, with, perhaps, exclusive money-off offers and good deals for yours and others' products and services, only available for newsletter subscribers. If you do affiliate marketing, then include the deals and vouchers for businesses you affiliate to.

Now.....this is the easy bit ! And of course we've not yet mentioned advanced social networking. Linkedin, for example, could play a part at step 3 and 4. Youtube channels dedicated to your stuff. Flickr photo accounts.Technorati tags. All linked, tagged, and tweeted. The trick is to keep it going, and that does take time. Many companies, recognising the phenomenal growth in social media during the last four years now employ someone or even a SM team. But its time and resources well spent if it engages people, initiates and maintains conversations, positions you as an expert, and generates prospects for business and referrals.

Which, after all, is what any marketing strategy is all about.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad