Social Media Blogging
Incorporating Social Media With Your Blogging is the Best Way to Grow Your Business
I have a few quick questions for you…
Are you building your LinkedIn network every day? Are you posting to Facebook? How about YouTube? Twitter? If the answer is “no” “no” ”no” and “no”, then at this very minute your internet-savvy competitors are quietly preparing to put you out of business. Forever.
Social media was once thought of as a fad, but now it is simply too big and powerful to be taken lightly. Social media — with sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube — has fundamentally altered the way we communicate with each other and with our prospects and customers.
The numbers are too impressive to ignore: If Facebook was a country; it would the third largest in the world. YouTube is now the second largest search engine behind Google, exceeding 2 billion views a day. You get the idea. If you are not on social media, you can be sure your customers and competitors are; so now is the time for you to take action and get involved before it’s too late.
Social Media: A Better Kind of Marketing
You should know that social media marketing is vastly different than traditional marketing – and so much more powerful. In social media marketing you don’t interrupt your customers with promises hoping to catch their attention. You forge direct relationships with customers built on their experiences with your brand. You engage your customer in a way that is memorable and meaningful.
Social media blogging is about developing relationships with your customers through your blog and by being generous with value up front. You become a little vulnerable by including customers in your marketing process; candid by being yourself; and accountable by backing up your promises. Social media blogging turns strangers into friends, then into fans, then into loyal customers.
Focusing Your Social Media Efforts
If one were to try becoming active on all of the thousands of social media sites, it would be virtually impossible. There isn’t enough time in the day; and besides, many sites are focused on small niches that would not be relevant to your business.
If you’re just starting out, you’ll be best served by establishing a presence on four major social media sites. Each has its own strong points which compliment the other, so by being on all four you have a variety of different ways to reach and interact with your customers and compel them to visit your store or website.
Facebook: Facebook is the key way to establish relationships with your prospects and customers. Every business should take advantage of the enormous reach of the site, currently with 500 million active users, by setting up a free business page and creating content that builds relationships with your best customers and interests them in buying your products.
LinkedIn: With its over 100 million business professionals, LinkedIn is the site to make and establish meaningful relationships with the movers and shakers of the world. You can establish a personal profile and network with others, look for opportunities for partnerships and new business, and create a profile for your company. Often you can secure work right on the site, and you can add three links to your profile that lead to websites where you can sell your products.
Twitter: Known as a micro-blog, because you write in 140-character bursts, Twitter is great for creating buzz about your company. It’s a global networking event where you meet and greet new people, strike up conversations based on common interests, and discuss business trends in your industry. Once you can engage and entertain other people on Twitter, then it’s easy to connect them to your main website where they can be converted in buying customers.
YouTube: If a picture paints a thousand words, a video does even more: It creates an emotional connection with your customer in a way that static text or pictures never could. A video of you talking about your business or demonstrating your product on YouTube becomes a 2/47 global selling tool that people can watch online or on their phones. You can add links to your website in the video and also on the video page, thereby giving your viewers a place to go to purchase your product.
Most bloggers realize that social media blogging and social media is a revolutionary way to engage prospects in a two-way dialog that can lead them to becoming raving fans and buying customers. It’s not a fad anymore. Every blue-chip company is using blogs and social media…and every small to medium business ought to take notice and get active today.
If you’re not using a blog with social media to promote your brand and your business, then it’s not too late to start! But hurry, since social media is where your customers are getting their news and information, and deciding what to buy and where to buy it.
Build unshakeable bonds with your customers so they stay your customers for life; Pull customers and prospects to your blog by talking to them in REAL TIME; Engage your customers in meaningful dialogs as they help you build a successful business; Enable consumers to recommend you and become raving fans — giving you worldwide exposure; Reach your customers and sell to them wherever they use mobile devices; Join the conversation and become relevant to today’s consumers so they know, trust, and buy from you; React quickly to trends in the marketplace and stay one step ahead of your competition. So, I wanted to show you how you can start incorporating social media into your blogging and online efforts!
Minus all the techno-language and in plain English, I’d like to give you access to four webinars taken from a seminar by Dan Sherman, that will give you the knowledge you need to begin implementing social media to enhance your business. You’ll learn things like how to engage fans, create connections, build your personal brand, and grow your sales… right away.
