Business Aspect of Social Networking

What the $^#* is Social Networking? Social Networking is exactly what it says it is. Networking socially, through e-mail, text messages, websites like <a href="http://www.twitter.com" title="Twitter">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com" title="Facebook">Facebook</a>, and business profiles like <a href="http://www.biznik.com" title="Biznik">Biznik</a>. You've heard the term Social Networking before. If you haven't, you are living in a tiny box in an isolated attic somewhere in the forest. I'm just sayin'. You know what Twitter is. You've probably heard people say that Twitter is stupid. Why would I want to know what people are doing every 42 seconds. You have a FaceBook account. I know you do! A blog? Yes, you're reading one right now... The number of people being sucked into this market is growing as you read this. "Why?" you ask... There are many reasons for the boom in this 'profession' of constantly updating others and staying updated yourself. These are the reasons why business are, or should be, using this great marketing tool to expand their brand and attract more customers. Why Social Networking is Important for damn near every business! Businesses use Social Networking as a free, or low-cost, channel to promote their business, market their brand, and create awareness about their products/services. A website is no longer good enough. You need to expand your horizons and interact with people. The more you interact with people, the more awareness it creates about your business. The more people you tell, the more those people will tell others. People use the internet for a reason. People now other people that need your product, that need your service. It's called networking! It's called the World Wide Web for a reason! It's free exposure! All you need to do is give it time each week to create a valuable blog post, give time for yourself throughout the day to find tweets of interest, read what others are doing in your niche, and socialize. The purpose of all of this networking is to bring people to your business website. Hopefully, with time, these people will become customers. Ideally, you should focus on making them repeat customers. Now, not all of this extra traffic will produce a sale of some sort, but it's additional views you would not otherwise get. Trust me, if you give this marketing tool time, stay active with posts and tweets, interact with people, and ensure that your content is atleast somewhat valuable, you will see an increase in traffic from all over the place. And you can forget about the people who said Twitter and the like were dumb. For example, I started 2 weeks ago and have traffic coming from all over the world. I haven't even given the Social Networking my full attention. Given, I have not made a sale yet, but my objective thus far is generating traffic. I can safely say I am succeeding.  :-) The primary goal you should set for Social Networking, as a business owner, is to generate traffic to your website. This will eventually generate sales of your product or service. All you need is time and a little knowledge that will come in practicing using these tools. I'm starting out now! Another incentive for bringing customers to your website is using Advertising space. The more traffic you receive, the more you can charge for each space. You should have a steady amount of followers before attempting to advertise. Along with selling your product or service, this advertising will generate a little extra cash on the side. Who wouldn't want that? Don't get me wrong however, keep in mind that tweeting and blogging away is what you should be doing, but keeping it relevant to your readers, and making it interesting enough for them to keep following you is what it's all about. So what else does Social Networking do? Besides direct traffic and public relations, Social Networking greatly increases your search engine rankings! The more followers you have, the more posts you make, the more tweets you tweet, the more links you make, the more links you link to,  the more respect you get with Search Engines. It's true. Links and followers create a sense of trust or relevance to your website in the eyes of the search engine spiders and crawlers. Therefore, when the 93% of internet users who use a search engine to find what they are looking for, your business will become higher and higher in your niche on search results pages. In turn, say it with me, will create more traffic.  Remember, CONTENT IS KING! Practice makes perfect. The more you tweet, the more you blog, the better your end result will turn out. You have to learn from experience and from your mistakes, just like anything else. I am not that great of a blogger, but you are reading something that is a start to something I am using for the above reasons. Bare with me! If you are a blogger,  the better you get, the more opportunities will arise. For instance, guest writing an article for another popular blog website will generate massive amounts of exposure. If you can make really, super relevant and interesting articles, the higher your traffic numbers will be. Better yet, you know those subscriptions you receive in the mail called magazines? Yeah, guest write for them and watch those traffic numbers rise! I can go on and on about why the above points I have made are important. I could also write an extremely long post about each point, but I don't like to write long blogs because they get old after a while. So think about the ideas I set forth and what you can do with what is available to you. If you aren't interested, you now know why I am giving into the fantastic world of Social Networking Marketing.   2009-10-31T03:39:33Z

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business-aspect-of-social-networking

2009-11-01T10:43:50Z

2009-11-01T17:44:12Z

You've heard of Twitter, you know what a blog is, you know you have a Facebook account. But what are the benefits of business profiles with all of these Social Networking websites and how can you take advantage of them?

Business Aspect of Social Networking

2009-11-01T17:44:12Z