You have a personal profile on Facebook or Twitter and know the ropes pretty well. So you might be thinking that social network marketing for your company is virtually the same. Well, it's not.
To explain further, your personal profile consists of your family and friends, whereby a company profile consists of people interested in your brand (potential customers'). These are people who will be following you, whose opinions matter in regard to your company and your brand.
Not everyone who has tried social network marketing has done so successfully. It is still fairly new. The positive thing is that we can learn from others mistakes and find a way to move forward.
To shine a light on some of the dark areas of this new phenomenon we have put together some suggestions to help you on your way.
Here are our 5 Tips:
1. Don't make the mistake of running before you can walk.
You may get excited as you begin this form of marketing and join many sites. Less is more at the beginning. It is difficult to be in two places at the same time and this applies to online communities also.
2. Focus your attention on only one social network at a time and build a solid fan base there.
To create a quality page with a good fan base it is best to master one social network at a time. After all we don't want the quality of our work to suffer and this could happen if we try multitasking (jumping between two social networks at the same time). Learn all there is about the site you are on, post regular updates, engage your followers by running a contest. You will establish a solid fan base and when this happens, you can delegate to someone else while you move onto the next site to begin building again.
3. Find a person to represent your brand.
To free you up for building a new fan base on another site it's a good idea to find someone who can be in charge of your social network profile. This person can post status updates, reply to question and generally take care of the running of the profile. Someone with a keen interest in your brand is best, someone who your fans can relate to. People don't easily trust a brand unless they are familiar with the person behind the logo.
4. Be yourself
If you are inauthentic in your profile your fans will pick this up. Social networking is about building relationships. This applies to company profiles, how can people build trust in you if you are not being honest.
5. Take Part.
Network the way you would offline, remember there are other social network marketers also out there working to promote their brands. Begin conversations; ask questions, you may find you learn a lot from other others.
A social network is just another form of a social situation. Remember the way we treat other people has an impact on how we are viewed. Being kind, nice, and polite will take you a long way down the social network marketing road, and maybe you'll find that by being so, you won't be trudging down a lonely road.
