photo credit: rafeejewell

If you have WordPress this is pretty easy as there is a Facebook social plugin (and others). Facebook explains the Like button on their website. More and more actions around the web will be tied into social networking, what your friends like, are doing and even has e-commerce implications as 3rd party websites will know what you ‘like’. A very powerful trend that you need to be on top of.

I offer consulting services so feel free to contact me if you need help!

This video explains how two companies are
adjusting to what their customers want:

http://bit.ly/WLInsider

Is your business doing the same?

Watch the video to find out.

Enjoy!

Will

P.S Don’t disregard this “trend”. As the
video explains, it’s responsible for one
customer spending over $80,000 during the
last 5 years with one of the companies
featured in this video:

http://bit.ly/WLInsider

—–
NOTE: I am a compensated affiliate for
WishList Products.
—–

Social media marketing is huge because remember, that’s where people are, and so it can make you money online. And customers expect you to be accessible, answering their questions, dealing with their grievances, and so on.

Why do companies advertise on tv, radio, magazines, etc? Because that’s where people are, or should I say ‘were’. As people spend more of their time online, companies need to follow. However, no one likes to be sold to, and most of the ads are highly untargeted, ie. irrelevant.

Here’s the two-pronged approach you can use. Constantly create or repurpose your content, and use social media to let people know about that content, and grow a loyal following that loves your company (because you respond and give away free content). Make them offers and people will naturally want to check out your company.

So get out there and build your community!

To summarize, get your content on sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and drive that traffic to your own website or blog. I’d also add that your focus should be to build a community around your products or services.

For local businesses (where you rely on local offline customers) also set up a Google Local Business listing.

People are spending more and more time on social networking sites such as Facebook. So as marketers we want to be on those sites. But rather than sending people to your normal Facebook profile you’ll want to create a Facebook page for your business. One of the reasons for this is there is no limit to the number of friends you have, as there is with a regular profile.

The beauty of sites like Facebook is that if someone is a fan of your Facebook page, they will see the posts you make from that page in their news feed. So they might see you multiple times a day in their feed whereas you can’t usually email them multiple times every day without annoying them. So this keeps you in their minds. Don’t just spam offers though, you’ll want to provide some useful relevant content to your following.

The idea behind this is to create a community around your content. The content itself isn’t as valuable as the experience of the community. Then you offer things for sale to this community and some percentage will purchase this from you.

So how do we get people to sign up for our Facebook page? Well at first I used to say ‘join my Facebook page’ in emails and not much would happen. Then I offered an incentive (free upcoming live webcam guitar lesson) and the signups started happening. This is the same as an email opt in page. You need to offer something of value. I got this idea from Ryan Lee who offered a free digital book of his when you became a fan and sent him an email with your Facebook user id.

To create a community around your content, encourage feedback, comments and a cool idea is to get video submissions from your fans. People can post on your Wall or create a discussion. Create a contest where people submit a video telling why they love your product or why they want to win the prize, etc and have them post it to YouTube and your Facebook page. Do things on your Facebook page that you don’t do elsewhere. Keep it useful, fun and subtle.

Perry Belcher did a great series of videos to remind us how to use social media sites, and why you shouldn’t try to make money with social media. He equates social media sites to a party, and his blog to his home. The number one rule is ‘Don’t be an asshole’. Trying to sell things at a party or insisting that people you follow, follow you back is the equivalent of being an asshole.