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Part 6 of social media marketing: work to build your community
April 29, 2008
Once you have built your website with great content and articles that interest and are relevant to your audience, it's time to start building your online presence. As a small business owner, you know how important it is to shake hands at events, pass out your business cards, and advertise who you are and what you offer. The online social world is no different.
Based on your benchmarking from part 1, you now have a list of sites that are discussing your products and what they're saying. It's time to join the discussions and make a name for yourself. Remember, you are your brand.
Six tips to keep in mind:
1. When joining the discussion, be sure to answer the question and keep it brief. Do NOT sell or adopt the salesman persona. Simply put, that's the best way to blackball your business.
2. Encourage responses and ask questions yourself.
3. Be transparent. Include your name and the name of your business/web address so people know who you are and what buisness you're associated with.
4. Click-throughs and purchases go up dramatically when you give customers a message they care about, rather than just broadcasting to them (thanks to Larry Weber for this information)
5. Know the value of the people/website you're dealing with. Build their trust by engaging, informing and caring about what they're asking for and what their needs are.
6. If you're commenting on someone's blog (instead of an e-community), it's important to get to "know" them before you try to get them to respond or visit your website.
Once you're spent some time online interacting with your target audience, you'll be ready to start promoting yourself (step 7).
Part 1: research & evaluation / benchmark what people are discussing | Part 2: ensure your website is visit-worthy | Part 3: create bookmarks & tagging for your content | Part 4: increase your linkability & reward your inbound links | Part 5: evaluate the online channel strategies | Part 6: work to build your community & participate yourself | Part 7: promote your company and yourself | Part 8: measuring your progress
Posted by Suze Bragg on April 29, 2008 | Comments (0)
