THE SECRETS OF MARKETING VIA SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES - Part 3

 ADOPT A DIFFERENT TO SUIT EACH SITE

To really make the most of social networking, you need to present yourself as someone down-to-earth but professional. So let’s take a look at how you can do that by focusing on a few important points to remember.

 WHO ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

On a very basic level, you’re looking for customers. But you’re also looking for a certain type of person who is going to become your customer.

What you need to do is to find out who that person is. What do they like? What are they really interested in? And so on. And once you have found out the answers to those questions, you can target your social networking efforts towards that person.

This should be easy to do if you know your product well. And it also means you won’t get overwhelmed by the volume of people on the social networking site you are targeting – because you will know exactly which ones you are aiming for.

But make no mistake - knowing your audience is the key to using social networking sites successfully when it comes to marketing your products. If you don’t know who you are aiming at, you won’t attract much attention at all. At least, not the type you are looking for.

This follows up on choosing the right sites for you in the first place. Once you have done that, don’t assume that everyone on that site is going to have an interest in you. It’s just a question of narrowing your focus even more and zoning in on the people you want to reach. Don’t try and sell to everyone because it won’t work.

ADAPT YOUR PROFILE 

Don’t make the mistake of going onto one of these sites and setting up your profile just as it would be for YOU.

This really follows on from the last point about knowing who you are looking for. If you know what will attract their attention, then you will know how to write your profile so it fulfills that purpose.

For example, photographers are naturally going to be interested in the profiles of other photographers. Writers will naturally gravitate towards other writers. And people who are trying to make money online will search for others who are trying to do the same. This applies to every niche subject or market you can think of.

Why? Because they are trying to find the knowledge they need to succeed. Or in some cases, knowledge about a subject they like that they don’t yet know about. And if other people who share their interests are easy to find through their profile, they’ll want to stick with them and see what they have to say, won’t they?

Remember that you’re not on there for social kicks: you’re on there to make contacts and generate interest in your business. That means you need to create a profile that is different from how you would normally describe yourself. The only prerequisite here is that it should catch the attention and make people look closer.

But being professional isn’t always going to be the right approach here. You want to seem casual and approachable, so use the kind of language your preferred audience might use. For example, if you sell a range of USB gadgets, you could describe yourself as a USB gadget freak. If you sell eBooks on the subject of saving money, you could refer to yourself as a thrifty money saver.

There are plenty of possibilities here and you should find that you can change the wording you use on your profile page, so don’t be wary of experimenting.

You might feel like a bit of a fraud, to begin with, because your real passions might be very far away from what you include on your profile. But you should think of yourself as being two very distinct people – a business person and a normal day-to-day person. And it’s the business person that is going to be joining these social networking sites.

There is one other VERY important point to mention here. When you join a site, make sure your first task is to create that profile and get it up and running. You don’t want people clicking on your screen name to find out more about you, only to be met with a website address and little else.

If that happens, there is a very good chance they won’t be back. So make sure you are ready to create a complete profile from scratch as soon as you join.

USE THOSE TOOLS 

One key way of making sure you get other people to follow you on these sites is to use the tools they give you to promote your social networking status elsewhere.

For example, Twitter has a range of badges or widgets that you can use elsewhere. These are ideal for putting on your blog for example, and they even have ones that have been specifically designed to go on MySpace and Facebook.

They’re worth using because they enable you to attract more followers from outside the social

networking sites. Once they find you they are more likely to follow you – especially if you make it easy for them by using widgets like these.

But there is another tactic you should use as well if you are going to join more than one site. Whatever you do, make sure you link them all together. It seems to be generally assumed that if someone is on one social networking site, they will frequent others as well. So don’t be shy about promoting your other social networking efforts; in fact, you will find that

some sites actually give you space to put your screen names for those in as well.

START  USING FIREFOX!

If you’re not using the Firefox browser already, I highly recommend you do so if you are going to be active on social networking sites.

That’s because it gives you far more functionality than many other browsers. People create add ons to use with Firefox, and since many of these are associated with social networking sites, your marketing will be made that much easier by using the ones you like the look of.

A good example of how much faster and more convenient Firefox is can be seen by looking at just one of the many add ons that are available for Twitter. One of the best ones is called TwitterBar, and it quite simply allows you to make a post directly from the address bar that you would usually type your website address into.

Needless to say, this is a real-time saver. But it also makes your use of the social networking site much more enticing. This is because you have that regular reminder – by way of a small dot at the end of your address bar – that you have a social networking site you need to be marketing on.

So whatever sites you decide to focus on, check to see if there are any add ons that will make your marketing quicker and easier to achieve. You’d be amazed at the difference this can make.