You likely have heard of the social media revolution that has been occurring over the past few years. Chances are that you have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and/or others; social media has really become a way of life in the 21st century.

You can utilize social media in your business today as well, but you may be wondering, “How?” Read on to find out some useful information about marketing in today’s business environment.

Many businesses will make the mistake of opening up social media accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, make a few posts/tweets/pins, then leave the accounts unattended and unused for weeks or even months.

This is a big mistake. Your followers and customers who are actively following you to find out more about your business and what you offer will quickly lose interest and turn elsewhere (i.e. your competitors) because you aren’t actively keeping up your accounts.

For this method to be effective, you MUST be posting regularly to your social media accounts. “What do you mean by ‘regularly’?” you may ask. While it can vary based on your target audience, you really should be posting to these accounts a few times a day.

A good barometer is to check out your competitors’ social media accounts and see how often they post, plus check to see if they are gaining more followers in that time span; if so, you know they have a good posting formula going, and you should follow it.

Another tip with your social media marketing efforts: You can’t just promote your offers. “Social” means being interactive with your followers. This means that when they ask you a question about your product or service, you need to answer them as soon as possible.

If your followers post a complaint about your product or service, you need to respond, apologize for their poor experience, and do everything you can to make it right. If they retweet, share, or repin a post of yours, thank them for doing so.

Do NOT ignore your followers and think that you should not interact with them because you are a business. In this age of social media, businesses must be willing to interact with their followers in order to build a relationship with them.

By interacting with your audience these marketing efforts give positive results to your business.

A third social media marketing tip that relates to the last tip is that you should provide mostly information and interesting news about your industry about 80% of the time. At most, 20% of your posts should be offers of your products/services.

Your followers do not want to be bombarded with promotional offers on your company’s fan page, Twitter stream, or Pinterest pin boards. You want to provide interesting content, and especially interactive content, that will keep your followers coming back to your fan pages.

“What do I mean by ‘interactive?’” you may ask. Posts that make your followers think and respond; for instance, posting questions or surveys about your company, current industry news, or products/services they’d be interested in is a great way to get your followers to actively participate with your accounts.

Remember that “social” means being “interactive” and “engaging”; as a result, you should not be just stating facts, but getting your followers to participate and respond as well.

In Summary:

Social media marketing can really be beneficial to your business today and in the future if you keep the preceding tips in mind. It’s important to post to your accounts regularly, provide more information and be less promotional about your products/services, and have your followers engage you as much as possible.

By implementing these guidelines with your business’ social media accounts, you will likely see great responsiveness to your offers when you do promote them, thanks to the relationship you have built via your social media marketing efforts.

Hope you enjoyed this article.

Until next time, take care.

Kindly,

Heli

Know how to generate lead and recruit online are the twin pillars of a successful MLM home business today.

MLM has not changed much since the 60s when networking as a form of business is in the rage. But today the traditional way is making use of online techniques with just a click of a button.

Get started and get acquainted with the 2 contemporary formats of MLM:

Format No. 1 – Lead Generation

Before the advent of the internet, marketers would need to source for their prospect’s phone numbers and perhaps their mailing address to contact them later. Once they have these two particulars, they would proceed to call them to request for an appointment to meet them at their convenience in order to interest them with your business opportunity. They would have sent them promotional information about your business through the post.

Today, marketers would spend most of their time involved in lead generation processes over the internet. Leads are captured in your squeeze page where your visitors would give you their name and email address in exchange for some relevant free offers.

You prospect these people using your email marketing campaign and coax them to join the network. This is made easier as this list of subscribers would have some interest in the topic or business opportunity after they have read your briefs in your squeeze page.

You have to remember that it is not just any leads that you want. What you want is highly targeted leads who are really interested your business opportunity and who want to be part of network and want to have a business like yours.

Especially in MLM, these targeted leads are more beneficial to your network because they are most willing customers and the chance of falling out is slim.

Format No. 2 – Recruit Online

The best way is to recruit members is through the internet with your own website. Then marketers can promote their website through various marketing methods like the popular ones being article marketing, blogging and even through email marketing campaign.

Once you have these marketing campaigns working for you to drive traffic to your website, both your lead generation and recruiting work will be going auto-pilot.

Ever since internet skyrocketed in the late 1990s when it reached almost 50 million users in the United States, computing has gone a long way especially in doing business in today’s economy.

The use of internet has become part of everyone’s life and the innovators of these technology has created a world – wide web of information and tools free for everyone with computer internet access. The world has become a smaller place, information and communication has never been more easy and accessible.

When Facebook reached 100 million members within one year after it’s launch, and more than 600 million active users as of January 2011, making it the most successful and most popular social media site today, the use of social media networking has become a major component in conducting business. The idea of having to go to one place and strategize your way to business success has attracted business owners all over.

The use of social media networking as a strategy to increase business sales is influenced by the idea that today, more people prefer to search for good reviews and word of mouth recommendations and not advertising when buying a product. It is no longer enough for a business to market its products and services with good advertising and public relations and it takes more than just a good idea to sustain a business. Today, a business needs social media presence to stay relevant in today’s market.

Advantages of Social Media Networking

1. The use of social media networks allows you to directly connect with customers allowing you to target a specific audience and quickly gather feedbacks.
2. Business can easily move from one target market to another if one doesn’t work.
3. Easily get to know people in a specific location and build personal connections. It acts as a means of finding potential clients for your business.
4. Connect with new people, similar to real – life networking
5. Getting the word out without an intermediary, like reporter or columnist

How do you use social media networking as a business strategy?

1. A business owner should be making personal connections with people, providing them information that add value to their lives and business by their product. Today, companies that are most successful in converting followers to potential clients are those who interact most with their network.

2. Respond to questions and leave feedbacks if you find blog posts of your target niche. This establishes your expertise on your field. By being helpful, honest and approachable shows your ability to lead positive results.

3. Make your target audience feel that they need to participate in your projects or promotions, make your approach benefit – based.

4. Strengthen existing customer loyalty by offering giveaways, special offers and sweepstakes. This technique will sustain consumer excitement about your product and services because everyone loves free stuff.

Social Networking Sites

There are several social networking sites out there and can be categorized depending on the purpose they serve. The basic type of social networking are:

1. Popular “Free Sites”
Under this category, social media sites that provide free social networking are Facebook, MySpace, Path, YouTube, Twitter and Ning.

2. Professional / Business Sites
Examples of professional networking site include LinkedIn, Fast Pitch and Plaxo.

3. Industry – Specific Networking Sites
These sites allow people to connect under the same industry. These sites help people organize events of the same niche or interests. Examples of such sites are – Meet, Meet – Up, ResearchGATE and much more.

Everyday, new ways are being introduced on how to market, promote and sell a product or service. Joining the community utilizing these networking style to reach out to customers or clients in order to thrive in today’s business environment is a must for all business start-ups. Once you established your business strategies and tapped your resources in order to sustain a growing business, getting into the social media networking is one vital avenue towards gaining success in starting a business in today.