I have been invited to groups, to share applications and have received more friend requests then I can count. To some I say yes, but to most I ignore… why? Because the people who sent me those invitations have not bothered to:
- Get to know me
- Ask if it is something I’d be interested in participating in
- See what my business is
Here in lies the fatal flaw of social marketing. If you don’t do it well, you won’t succeed at all.
The same principles that one uses in face to face marketing are applied to marketing online.
To succeed in Social Marketing you must:
- Know WHO you serve best (your market)
- Know where the people in your market live, hang out, gather, chill, chit chat, etc.
- Get involved in the communities where your market exists.
- Get involved in those communities for the benefit of the community
To apply these techniques to Facebook:
- Create a profile that is appealing to your market.
- Search for groups where the people in your market interact.
- Join those groups or create a group to attract those people
- Create a page about your business
- Invite people to look at or become a fan of your page
- Put up posts on the Walls of those people who have shown interest in your business
- Build relationships with those people
Your goal is not to jump up and down in front of as many people as you can to get their attention. Your goal is to seek out the people who you will serve best and get to know them to ensure your service / product is a good fit for them.
If the fit is right, trust me, they will come to you!
I’ve just recently come to understand that whether or not money changes hands all bloggers are to some degree marketing their writing to other bloggers. Without some sales strategy how else would we gain faithful readers. Now that I have come to this understanding I can see that the tips you provide above are applicable to me too. Thanks for sharing them.
When it comes to Facebook though I’m choosing not to join. Their recent problems with violation of personal information privacy are concerning. Also everything one buys via Beacon is being tracked and that also causes me discomfort.
When Facebook came out with Beacon, it created somewhat of an uproar once people realized just how much of their personal information was being relayed to others. Some Facebook users were not bothered by it but a lot of them were not so happy. Even the bothered users continued to use Facebook despite their concerns because they had so much time invested in it and did not want to lose their network.
http://www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/identity-at-risk-on-facebook
http://smnr.eu/content/my-data-my-data-social-media-news-release
G’night and see ie. read you again soon. 🙂
The bothered user continued to use Facebook may be because they grow their network and they never want to loose it , I considered Facebook as one of the best social networking site despite it does not attract much of the traffic as compared with other social networking site.
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Rogers
http://klpd.com