C and S Software

Social and business networking is not going anywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Biznik and other similar sites are evolving quickly to take over where blogs left off. Social media is a tool that can be used to benefit businesses that are willing to think outside the typical PR box. Facebook pages, ads, and profiles are potentially your secret weapon for building your brand image before a warm audience quickly and cheaply. But how do you know if Facebook is right for your business model? How will you know if Facebook is the social networking site you want to target your efforts for your company? You have to find a ready-made interested audience worth your efforts (those ten thousand fanatics who can promote you and your business).

How will you feed that audience to keep them satisfied but still hungry enough to come back for more? Facebook has over 130 million active members and the number continues to grow at a phenomenal rate daily. You can use it as a powerful marketing tool if you figure out how to maneuver through all the features and applications Facebook has available. With 130 million+ users, it is obvious that Facebook marketing can be a powerful place to reach new customers and drive hordes of traffic to your website.

Working in Facebook effectively means you have to make a plan to create a public profile and post an avatar (photo) that attracts people to your page. Simple, straightforward information and a decent headshot is a great place to start. Include your business contact in your listing and then go out and find colleagues, clients, and other professional personal contacts and add them as your “friend” and then ask them to reciprocate. This is a quick and effective way to start building your community and finding your 10,000 zealots. You can buy ad space on Facebook to reach a targeted market segment at fairly affordable rates or you can create a Group to network with and expand your business contacts. Another useful tool on Facebook is the Facebook Marketplace. You can promote and sell your goods and services there for free!

If your company has a blog you can import it into Facebook through newsfeeds. You can promote meetings, conventions, marketing events, etc on their Events page. There are so many new and emerging add-ons and applications it is important to begin to know Facebook so you can stay abreast of their latest and greatest trends that can benefit your business. With Facebook you can quickly and easily connect with potentially hundreds of new contacts. If you are a local business and rely on a local web presence you might want to explore the Marketplace page and find people in your local area who might need your goods or services.

Think of Facebook like a neighborhood potluck dinner. Hang out, ask about other people, and begin to create relationships. Get to know people, share, and be a giver not a taker. Facebook can be a major traffic source if used correctly. You can just go in and set up a profile and wait for it to automatically send you messages or you can go out and actively meet people every day and make Facebook work for you. You get out of Facebook what you are willing to put in it. With a little research you can make Facebook work for your company.

Find the targeted audience that fits your goods, services, and products and then reach out and find them by age, location, gender, interests, education, groups, etc. As social and business networks continue to grow rapidly and the daily repeated visits by their members, how can a company ignore the possibility of implementing it as part of their marketing plan?

By: Shannon Evans

About the Author:

Recently I was asked if Facebook could be a good business tool for specialized businesses. My answer “ABSOLUTELY”!

We all know what a powerful tool Facebook and other Social Media sites are for those who are selling business coaching services or cosmetics or books, etc. but how can we use it to grow a specialize business? Let’s use a medical transcription business, for example.

I am not going to claim to know a lot about this industry but for our example we are going to assume that this business

#1 has employees or hires freelancers to do the transcribing and #2 does the transcribing for doctors and hospitals.

To have a successful growing business you have to market to both potential employees and potential clients.

A quick search for “medical transcription” on Facebook, as of the writing of this article, finds over 1500 people with the words in their profile, 83 pages dedicated to medical transcription and 192 groups. The largest page has 500 members and is a medical transcription job search site. The largest group has over 2500 members and is a group for anyone wanting to discuss the industry.

How Does This Work For Your Specialized Business?

It is important to understand that people want to work for and want to buy from people and companies that they know and trust. Facebook Fan Pages give you an easy tool to build your credibility.

Become the Leading Authority on medical transcription?

Being the leading authority equals instant credibility. If you need financial advice are you going to ask your neighbor or are you going to ask the person who wrote a book, has a radio program or gives useful advice online. So if you are not currently a well known medical transcriptionist (to stay with our example) how do you become the leading authority.

Use your Facebook Fan Page for the following 3 things:

#1 Promote Yourself & Your Business

Write a book or an e-book - something short that you can give to prospective employees & clients. You can promote the book and/or e-book on your Facebook fan page. Give it away as a contest prize. I know this can sound really scary to someone who hasn’t written a book before but it really isn’t that difficult. If you don’t feel like you are ready to write a book you can simply search the internet for “private label rights” material that are related to your industry, purchase that for a small fee and then put your name on it (which is part of the deal with PLR materials).

What could you write about - your life as a medical transcriptionist? I did a quick Google AdWords search and found that a few of the top keywords for the field would be medical transcription jobs, home medical transcription, online medical transcription and medical transcription training. All of these would be great topics.

At this point you might be thinking - how is this going to get me new customers? You start to promote the book to people in your industry (freelancers, potential employees, potential clients), you sell it on Amazon which gives you instant credibility, people start to talk about it, The Today show wants to do an article on medical transcription so they call you because you wrote the book - do you see where this is going.

I’m not going to go into great detail but you should be blogging as well. Blogging is a great way to tell the world about you and your business. It is also very easy to promote through your page.

#2 - Give Great Tips on Your Facebook Fan Page

Get in the mode of sharing tips online - another great tool to build credibility. As the owner of the specialized business you know a lot of things - things you probably take for granted and assume everyone else in your industry knows. Trust me - they don’t. People will want to see what you are going to post next because they are learning things from you - they begin to really trust you and people want to work for and buy from those they trust.

Now both of these have been maybe a little more geared towards the potential employee and freelancers but what about those doctors offices.

#3 - Getting Potential Clients Involved

To continue with our medical transcription example, a quick search of the word Doctor on Facebook found over 3600 Fan pages (some with over 25,000 fans) already in existence. Now that your Facebook Fan Page is up and you have been putting some great content on it it is time to get involved with other pages. Become a fan of those pages where your potential client would also be a fan. Watch their conversations - answer questions that would pertain to your industry. Post great tips on their page and invite them to join your page.

Another great way to get them to your page is to run a Facebook ad - it is not expensive and you can target exactly who you are looking for. Maybe you are looking for doctors solely in the San Diego market. You can be that specific. The ad could invite them to become a fan of your page.

Remember - it is all about credibility, building your leading authority status and getting your name out there. When someone thinks about your industry you want them to think about your name.

“There are 3 types of people in this world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.” Mary Kay Ash

By: Michele Scism

About the Author:

Interest in using social media to help business has skyrocketed. It seems that everyone wants to be popular and have the most fans and biggest following. It is assumed by many that more followers equal more value. This has resulted in some unorthodox schemes designed to grab the user’s attention. While it is true that this could mean that more people want to share the information you post, it has very little correlation with an increase in overall interest in what you have to say. The value of social media is in its connection with other uses.

Building relationships should be the focus, rather than a media blitz designed to create a stir. When crafting your Internet marketing strategy, it is important to set realistic expectations. Managing your goals and following through when using social media to help business, will generate a loyal, quality following. In the long run, these are the users that will positively affect your top line and increase revenue. Social media marketing can be frustrating, especially when you are just starting out. Once you have completed a post, you can’t take it back. It’s out there for everyone to read, comment on and share. This makes it important to control your emotions.

Don’t post when you are frustrated, upset or feeling desperate. This will prevent you from making a bad decision that can detract from all of the good you have done. Using social media to help business is all about being making connections. Relationships are built over time. Education and communication are often among the goals of successful social media marketers. This can be time consuming, and it does not happen overnight. Don’t get drawn in by the push to see bigger results faster. This will only cause you to lose sight of your goals. Creating a consistent message and personality when using social media to help business is key.

Sharing experiences is part of building relationships, but think before you type. There are some things that just should not be shared. When in doubt, don’t. If the situation shared makes people uncomfortable, it can transfer to your brand. You will lose followers and potentially lose customers. When setting goals, be realistic. When using social media marketing to help business, focus on the reason you started blogging or posting in the first place. The more you post, the more feedback you will get. This helps you effectively tailor your campaigns to match the customer need. In the end, it translates to an enhanced online marketing campaign that captures market share and earns respect.

By: Liam McCauley

About the Author:

Many businesses are using social media networks for marketing purposes these days. Who can blame them? Social media is a quickly growing conglomeration of people from many countries, ages, and ethnicities who can potentially be exposed to your brand. Advertisers from the days when radio was the biggest medium would find it mind boggling that advertisers today can reach millions of people with very little effort. The difficulty with Facebook is consistently presenting interesting, informative content and interacting with people on a personal level.

Like other forms of social media, Facebook is a very viral community where news and items of interest spread like a wildfire. This is perfect for businesses trying to spread the word with new products or special promotions. Want to know what people think about your brand or product? Set up a poll or quiz on your Facebook page. For example, today Nabisco cookies gave out a coupon for a free box of cookies to everyone who became a Facebook fan of their profile. PopTarts recently had a poll on their Facebook page asking what new flavor of pastry they should create next. When I see something of note such as this, I forward it on to my brother, sister, and my mom. For the average teenager or social butterfly with hundreds of friends, this type of sharing can have a huge positive impact on the company.

Part of the beauty of online advertising is that instead of hoping to hit your target demographic on television, web site advertisement allows your target demographic to come to you through search keywords. There are currently over thirty-five million Facebook users. Of that number, over half of them check their Facebook profile every day. People on Facebook are also becoming more and more willing to interact and “rub shoulders” with advertisers. As long as you aren’t spamming or overly aggressive in your marketing techniques, people are willing to listen to your messages about your product. The more entertaining, weird, funny, unusual, etc. you can make that message, the more chance you have of going viral and reaching an enormous audience through your Facebook page. One company that understands this is Victoria Secret. Their “Pink” page is marketed as the “effortlessly cool younger sister” of the Victoria Secret brand. Fans can discuss what they like or dislike about the products, post pictures, and get information about shows and new products on a page designed for today’s teenagers.

By: Courtney Shipe

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