5 Social Media Marketing Tips You Cannot Ignore

As marketers race to all things social these days, a lot of them go in with blinders on, assuming that they can learn it on the fly. All they see are the massive amount of numbers flocking to MySpace and Facebook and they want a piece of that. But before they jump in here are 5 things they better not ignore as they attempt to slice up the pie.

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7 Key Steps to Social Networking

Social networking can be a great connection tool--you can stay in touch with family and friends that may be far away, keep abreast of activities in an organization or group, or even use it as a marketing tool. Here are 7 key steps to using social networking as a marketing tool, although you could adapt it for other uses as well.

Key Step 1: Locating a Group

Find groups with interests similar to the concerns of your business as well as ties to similar businesses. Same with hobbies and other activities.

Key Step 2: Auxiliary Groups

Often you can find several groups that are related to yours, or have concerns that are similar. For instance, if you have a ceramic business and belong to a ceramacists’ group, you might also want to join an artists’ group and possibly even an archaeological interest group.

Key Step 3: Nurture Connections

The more you offer good advice or tips, the more people will remember you. Offer sound advice and offer it as often as possible.

Key Step 4: Sharing Connections

You will be getting connected with people from all over. Share reliable and worthwhile connections with others, and cross-connect people in other satellite groups. You will increase your exposure within each social networking group.

Key Step 5: Listen

Your social networking group can often become a Petri dish for new ideas. Listen to the people on them and act on tips and advice whenever it’s sound. You could come up with lots of new ideas for your business.

Key Step 6: Participate Regularly

You should show up often and at key times--usually when the group is busiest. Social networking can only work if you’re there--in this way, it’s like other web marketing. You can’t just put up the page, advertise, and sit back while it works.

Key Step 7: Promote the Group

Bring new members into the group. You can start with your business mailing list. These people have already done business with you and can promote your reputation.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

Online Social Networking

Are you on MySpace yet? This has been a common question in the last couple of years, as more and more people are joining the popular social networking site.

Online social networking is a major activity these days, as it offers a more interactive, effective, immediate means of communication between friends within your social circle and a potential new circle.

These sites (especially MySpace) have allowed many amateurs to get their talents showcased, whether they are musicians, artists, filmmakers, photographers or designers. Online social networking allows these people to ingratiate themselves onto the busy world of the web and allows users of the sites to see and comment on what they have to offer.

Online social networking is the ideal means for people to remain in contact with one another; it could be seen as a more advanced, interactive and cost effective way of staying in instant communication between people when compared to mobile phone text messaging.

Certain networking sites allow you to join forums and groups, which allow you to engage in conversation and debate from a variety of people around the world. These groups work well together for people with vested and similar interests to share opinions and discuss a wide range of issues.

The main rival to MySpace in the UK is Bebo, which is a hugely popular networking site. The site works well for youths aged 14-17 and for students and young adults aged 18- 25. Bebo is ideal for local networking and staying in contact with your closest friends.

Other key online networking sites include YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook.

How Did Facebook Become So Popular?

Have You Heard Of Facebook?

By now, you are probably familiar with the popular social-networking website called Facebook.

According to Wikipedia, Facebook has more than 19 million registered users across 47,000 regional, work-related, college or high-school networks.

I Was Skeptical At First

Initially, I was very reluctant to embrace the Facebook phenomenon. However, my friends kept asking me “Hey Vincent, are you on Facebook?”…”Did you join Facebook yet” ”You need to visit Facebook.” This went on for weeks.

Surprisingly, when I checked my Hotmail account, I also received invites from dozens of friends including Andre, David, Trisha, Renee and Kevin

How Did Facebook Become So Popular, So Fast?

Finally, I decided to visit this website called Facebook. Once and for all, I wanted to discover why Facebook is so popular. I wanted to know how they managed to gain millions of members in a few short months? How did they become so big, so fast? I had to know the truth. I wanted to know their secret!

Facebook’s Secret Exposed

Aside from having an easy to navigate layout, the ability to keep tabs on friends, great content, and, amazing search capabilities, Facebook is utilizing one of the most powerful viral marketing strategies ever conceived.

It’s so simple, but yet extremely powerful.

Once my account was created, I immediately clicked on the friends tab. I noticed a drop down menu with several options including Invite Friends. Once clicked, I was taken to a page that allowed me to Import Email Addresses from my Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and Gmail.

I was also greeted with the following message:

"Enter your email login info below and Facebook will securely import your contacts from

your address book."

I simply inserted my email address and password and instantly all 78 of my Hotmail contacts appeared before me. With one click of a button, I was able to invite all my contacts to join Facebook.

I Quickly Realized The Power of This Application After using this tool to instantly invite all 78 of my Hotmail contacts; I quickly realized the power of this application! What impressed me the most was how simple it was to import and invite all of my contacts. Unlike traditional tell-a-friend forms, it only took a few seconds to invite 78 people using Facebook’s PHP address book importer.

By implementing this viral marketing strategy, Facebook has become one the most popular websites online.

5 Reasons Why Traditional Tell-A-Friend Forms Are Obsolete!

• They forced your visitors to manually input email addresses.
• Your visitors must also manually type the name beside each email address.
• Most forms only have around 10 input fields. Remember, the average person, has over 100 web mail contacts. Why limit yourself?
• People are lazy. Nobody wants to sit around and insert dozens of email addresses into your form!
• Ongoing subscription fees.

Once you make the decision to upgrade to a PHP address book importer. You will need to implement a variety of marketing strategies to maximize your success. In other words, simply installing such a script is NOT good enough.

3 Viral Marketing Strategies You MUST Do In Order To EXPLODE Your Online Business

Strategy #1: Motivate Your Visitors!

Let's get real. We live in a very selfish world. I’m sure you have a fabulous website. However, nobody is going tell his or her friends about it without asking the following question what's in it for me? You will be surprised what people will do if you provide the right incentive! Offering Free Giveaways is a good place to start.

Strategy #2: Don't Hide Your Tell-A-Friend Link

Hiding your link is a huge mistake. This is very frustrating to me. Most webmasters will place their tell-a-friend link at the bottom of their web page. They place it in some remote area of their web page and wonder why nobody uses it.

You must add your tell-a-friend link to the main navigation of your website. For example, most websites will have "About us" "Contact Us" "Products" added to the primary navigation. Your tell-a-friend link must also be added to the primary navigation of your website.

Strategy #3: It's All In The Name

Here's an idea. Instead of using the same boring link title "tell-a-friend" Why not say "Free Ipod" "Free Coupon", "Free E-Book" This will cause your visitors to actually click on the link. At that point, you can provide contest details / instructions.

Viral marketing is not a fad or gimmick. It’s a real marketing strategy that can increase the profitability of your business. Adding a PHP address book importer to your arsenal will instantly provide your visitors an easy way of inviting others to your website.

Facebook is already utilizing the new technology, shouldn’t you?

About The Author:

Vincent Newton is the creator of Friend Inviter, http://www.friendinviter.com Friend Inviter a powerful PHP address book importer that helps webmasters to increase traffic to their websites.