THE SECRETS OF MARKETING VIA SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES - Part 1

 TO START WITH - DO YOUR HOMEWORK 

This is vital if you are going to get some good results. Some social networking sites are quite lenient when it comes to members using them for business purposes. Others are completely against it.

You need to know exactly where you stand with each one before you get started because if you take a laid-back approach with a site that doesn’t like it, you won’t get anywhere.

This part is easy though. All you need to do is read the terms and conditions of each site that you are interested in, to see how promotional you are allowed to be. The more you know upfront, the better you will be able to integrate yourself into each website.

You should also take a look round and see what other people have done. But be careful with this approach because you may well come across people who have broken the rules and haven’t been discovered yet. And you certainly don’t want to join them, do you?

DON’T OVERDO IT

Before we get into how to make the most of social networking for business purposes, we should cover one important point.

There are a lot of social networking sites online today, and it can be tempting to join them all. But this can actually harm your chances of marketing successfully through them.

It works far better to join just two or three social networking sites rather than as many as you can. Just think about the amount of free time you have available each week. If you focus your efforts on a few sites rather than a lot, you’ll get far better results.

Why? Simply because the people who start to follow you on the sites you do use will expect you to be reasonably active on there. And if you are trying to keep up with half a dozen or more sites, you will naturally be spreading yourself a lot thinner.

And that means the effect will be diluted as well. So make sure you choose the best networks with the most people – and stick with them. And here we’re talking about the networks that have millions of followers. You won’t be aiming to connect with all of them, but you’ll soon find that you have a bigger niche audience to aim at – which is good news when it comes to making money.

Incidentally, when you are thinking about the sites that you should be joining, think about the type and age group of people who are using each site. You may need to do a bit of research here but it will be worth it. One site may have a huge audience comprised of college graduates, while another may feature a lot more young professionals. And if you are aiming at young professionals, then that first site – no matter how many users it has – won’t be the ideal one for you to join.