How Passing On Great Content Improves Your Social Media Presence on the Web

Mothers used to say “Would you jump off a bridge if everyone else jumped off a bridge?” when they were trying to convince their children not to succumb to peer pressure. Well, you might not jump off a bridge, but what you should do is follow the leader when passing on great content around social media websites. You will improve your social relationships and increase your company’s online presence at the same time.

There are several ways of sharing content and different kinds of content to share. On Facebook, for example, you can spread other people’s posts to all your Friends by pasting it into an update and reposting it. Otherwise, you can comment on it and it will appear on your profile page for anyone to see who visits there. On Twitter, you can ReTweet other people’s content across the social network to all your Followers.

The kinds of content you might want to pass on are endless. Links play a big part. You might pass on links for blogs, websites, news stories, press releases or videos. The kinds of posts you might want to share with others are endless. As long as the post is interesting, informative, funny or outstanding in any way that meshes with your brand image, it is a good choice to send on to others. ReTweets are the same way. Send along tidbits and links that you find fascinating or helpful.

When your Friends or Followers see that you are passing on their material, they will be thrilled that their ideas and choices are having such a wide impact. By the same token, when your Friends and Followers get passed-on messages from other people from you, they will see you as someone who is deeply involved in the social network rather than just using it as a megaphone to announce their business. They will accept you more fully as a part of the group.

When you engage your social contacts by sharing other people’s content with them, you establish a rapport you cannot get by spouting your own messages incessantly. It is a much less aggressive means of engaging your target market. Your social relationships will improve, your presence will grow, and consequently, your business will pick up. Believe me – your mother would approve.

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Social Networking and the Art of the Question

Sometimes people get the idea that social networking websites are great places to rant and rave about anything and everything that gets them excited. A more subtle approach is to ask questions instead. You will find that when you make inquiries, you will likely get a powerful response. There are all kinds of questions you can ask.

1. Ask for advice. It is best not to make the question directly related to selling, but you could involve your business in some way. For example, you could ask the question, “Should I have a New Year’s Eve party at my office?” A question like this is encourages people to give their opinion, which most people like to do anyway. It prompts them to share facts about themselves or their past experiences. This is a real opportunity to get to know your Friends better, and maybe learn something about their habits as consumers.

2. Ask an intellectual question. When you ask someone their interpretation of a book, play or even a movie, they get the opportunity to show how intelligent they are. Believe me; they will love you for it. Remember to treat all their intellectual musings with respect, giving them more good feelings about themselves, and consequently, about you.

3. Ask a technical question. If you are having problems understanding something technologically challenging, do not hesitate to ask people on your social networking site for bits of instruction. Not only will you have a chance to learn something important to you, but you will also have a chance to improve a relationship with someone who may prove to be a valuable asset in the future. Remember, though, that not everyone that purports to be an expert on technology really knows what he is doing. The best solution is to hear the instructions, consider their validity, possibly do some more research, and try them out for yourself. You can tell a Friend that you learned something to go along with his advice, but never tell him that his advice was worthless.

4. Ask a silly question. People like to hear from you when you ask interesting, humorous little questions to brighten their day. You will often see a string of responses coming from one small question if people find it funny enough. It makes them laugh and enjoy the day a little bit more. Take every opportunity to improve the lives of your Friends.

You can learn about your Friends, learn from your Friends, gain a loyal following, and enhance your persona on the social networking sites you use. It all starts will a simple idea. Master the art of the question and you will bring people to your virtual door.

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Social Media Interactions – The Trouble with a One-Way Approach

Consider the fact that interactions are communications or activities that take place between people. You would not know this if you tried to figure it out by analyzing what passes in some companies for social media interactions. If your company is not engaging your Friends or Followers, you might as well be taking out a billboard on the highway. Social networking sites are not the place for one-way communications.

One-Way Is the Lazy Way

Putting out one-way messages is the lazy way of using social media channels. You post your updates or make your Tweets, and do not bother to see what others are saying about them. That takes away one step right away. Then, you do not have to make any kind of response, and you have gotten rid of much more work, right?

That might be true, but easy is not always better. Full engagement is the way to make an impact on your social community. Otherwise, your posts appear as nothing but white noise, droning on in the background but generating no interest or buzz. People use white noise machines to help them go to sleep; do you really want to watch your audience drift off to slumber regarding you, your industry and your products?

One-Way Is the Selfish Way

Talking all the time about me, me, me gets you nowhere on social media websites. People are grateful for attention paid to them. They want to believe that their opinions, ideas, stories, and lives matter to their Friends. If you are so concerned with your marketing messages that you ignore the people around you on the social media site, you are only damaging your campaign. Curiously enough, you help yourself more on social networks when you think of others.

When you spend time listening to the concerns of others, you have several advantages. First and foremost, you can build relationships which are the heart and soul of social media marketing. Second, you can gain information about your products or services that will help you to improve them. Finally, you have the opportunity to provide a higher level of customer support than ever before, gaining you loyalty and trust for your brand. In the end, you will only win if you listen at least as much as you talk.

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Small Business Networking Tips – Narrowing Your Focus in Social Media Marketing

You may be fascinated with the possibilities of social media marketing, and rightly so. It has been a source of added website visitors and increased sales for my business and many others like it. However, if you do not have the staff or the budget to support a full scale social media blitz, consider scaling back your efforts and planning a more focused campaign.

If you are a self employed home businessperson or a sole proprietor of a business, you only have so much time to spend doing social networking. It is important to make that time count. The best avenue to take is to develop strategies to use your time to the best advantage.

You may be doing all the social networking yourself This could be due to budget constraints, having a small staff or no staff at all, or simply not trusting anyone else to do it for you. When this is the situation, it is best to concentrate your efforts on one social networking website.

Rather than having a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a MySpace account, a Friendster account, and as many others as you can find, choose the one you like best. This may mean that you try several out for a short time, but once you get the basic idea of each, select your favorite and run with that one.

Then, post to that social networking site several times a day. Have the website open on your desktop if possible, so you can glance over at the thread from time to time and add relevant comments to join in the conversation. When you are only trying to keep track of one site, you can work it more effectively and efficiently. It should be a part of nearly every day for you.

Since networking is a social event, it can be a good stress reducer during the day. One strategy to keep your pinpointed plan running smoothly is to choose the relaxing break times to do social networking. One of these times might be when you have been engaged in intense data analysis. Another time might be when you have been poring over your financial statements.

You can get on the social networking site and unwind, chatting with potential customers in a friendly and helpful way. Your amiable attitude will gain you more followers than all the blatant sales tactics you could ever devise would do. With your emphasis on one specific social networking site, you can have a very large presence on the Internet with no outside help. Then, if you want to expand to other sites, work it into your budget to pay the small cost of hiring professional social media marketers to post to those sites for you.

The Homepage Conundrum – Working Out the Possibilities

You cannot be all things to all people, and neither can your homepage. Your Internet marketing campaign will have better success if you nail down exactly the right amount of content and optimization on your website’s homepage. You obviously want to put your best foot forward, but you cannot show everything on the first page. This creates a puzzle that you have to figure out to make the most of that single most important page on your site.

Main Keywords

The homepage is the place for your main keywords. These are the keywords most identified with your company, your product or your service. You only have room for just so many main keywords, so make them count. Do not make them overly general, and make sure they relate specifically to your niche. It should be natural to incorporate them into your homepage content.

Keywords from Additional Pages

Each of the subordinate pages on your site will have specific keywords that go logically with their subject. Those pages will be optimized for those keywords or keyword phrases very easily, since the range of choices will be limited. Yet you cannot include all these keywords from all those pages on your homepage, especially if you have many pages on your site. The best solution is to use as many keywords from the ancillary pages as possible without disrupting the flow of the content on your homepage.

Product Descriptions

Unless you have a very small website, product descriptions are best left for secondary pages. You can mention products. You might want to put in a clickable link so visitors to your website can move on to the mentioned product if they are interested. However, the main theme of the homepage should be a general overview of your company and products, not intimate details of each and every one.

Video

Video is a great addition to your homepage. An interesting introductory video will keep your visitors happy long enough to look around your site and to discover the benefits of your products. That being said, there might be such a thing as too much video on your homepage in some cases. Mixed media usually works the best, so you capture the audience that likes to read as well as the audience that enjoys video and photos. You have to know your target demographic, though, in case yours prefers only watching video.

Your design, layout and navigational tools are also important, but not really part of your content. The most important thing about content and optimization on your homepage is to balance the general with the specific. Your overall theme should be the general, with hints of the specific information waiting on the inner pages. When you have found a good balance of ideas and images, you will have solved the puzzle of the homepage.

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