Social Network Marketing: “The Right Way” Part 1: Getting Started

A company looking to create a legitimate presence in the social networking arena has a variety of different ways to go about it. After identifying the different strategies that companies go about social marketing, I will offer specific tips and ideas on how to successfully use social networking for your business. This article is not only about Social Network Marketing, “The Right Way”, but also as a part of a broader internet marketing strategy. So what is “The Right Way”? I firmly believe that each company has different goals and aside from identifying the major social networking sites, there is not a one size fits all social networking strategy. You could get lucky and have social networking work for your company’s goals, or you could find out it was a big waste of time, if done incorrectly. To help maximize the profitable opportunity social network marketing offers, I have created Social Network Marketing: “The Right Way”

1. You can take care of getting started with your in house talent. Many of the successful companies I have studied have multiple people who tweet and more than one administrator for their business page on facebook.

2. The other option is to hire a full time social marketing/internet marketing manager. More and more companies are going this route. Setting up various accounts, finding time saving apps for your Firefox Browser, and knowing the ins and outs of the social networking world can be a full time job indeed.

3. A third option, is to hire a part time social networking manager that is in charge of building your brand and representing your company’s interests. This can be hard to achieve if your company can’t find the right local talent at the right price. Within this option, hiring a freelancer with sound research skills, understanding of social networking, and the ability to connect your company with the right people could very well be a good fit for your company.

After you have decided, the who, the what, and where of you social networking strategy, all you have to do is set up a twitter and facebook account and you’re done right? You can look over the dead twitter accounts and facebook business pages with very few fans and know this is the strategy they chose. Remember, “Fools rush in where Angels Fear to Tread.” Don’t be afraid, follow these steps, and do rush in, but with a strategy and a purpose.

An ounce of prevention is a worth a pound of cure. You may think you can skip this step, but research the company mission, products, and what their goals are out of the social networking campaign. Why? After you have set up your Facebook account, you can’t change the name without deleting the account, and the goal of each Facebook Business Page should be to get to the 100 fan mark, which allows you to get a custom unique address for Facebook which is great for search engine ranking. Know how long the company has been in business, the company’s strengths and weaknesses. I went through every product, every page, and read all of the websites of the company I am working with. All of the knowledge you will acquire during this step, will make social networking come more naturally. Tip: Don’t skip this step and take as much time as you need, it increases your chance of success exponentially.

Remember, you are not steeling ideas, but borrowing them to make uniquely your own. The largest land empire ever created and one of most progressive empires know to man did exactly this. Take notes, save links, and then start to blueprint how you will move your company forward in the social networking arena. You might be getting a little scared by this point, relax. Here is a list of articles and blogs that will help you understand all this social network marketing. Check them out, but come back and finish reading Social Network Marketing, "The Right Way".

Are they ahead of the game in social network marketing or lagging behind. Do you have to recreate the wheel? If they have a nice social networking campaign going, look at it, study it and adapt your company’s strategy and make it uniquely your own. For the sake of your company, hopefully they are ahead of their competition, so now what is the next step in creating a successful social networking strategy?

If you have one business, it is a good practice to go with the name of your business and/or what sector is the main focus of your business, along with your business name. The company I am working with is called 1World, LLC. They sell globes, maps, unique global gifts, green classroom furnishings, and historical replica furniture. As you can see there was some deciding that had to be done. After researching and knowing the company serves an impressive list of clients, but their main area of sales is the education sector, hence the Twitter name 1WorldEducation. You may want to put your Twitter or Facebook Badge on your website right away, but growing your accounts as I will describe below and waiting two weeks to do so, will make sure you have any wrinkles ironed out. In addition, when people access your accounts from your website homepage, it won’t be a graveyard.

Twitter does offer a search feature, where you can find people by typing in keywords. This does work for finding people to follow, but there are more effective highly targeted methods.

Do not rush in and add yourself to Wefollow, you will do that is a minute. At the top of the page there is a search bar that says, “enter a tag”. Tags are essentially keywords about twitter accounts. If you are reading this article, I hope you have a basic understanding of keywords, if not read this. Type in various words and phrase and see how many active twitter accounts show up. There is a nice pop down window that shows options for you to choose from. After understanding where the most active accounts are, or hidden niche tags, make sure that you write down 5 tags(keywords or phrases) that you will use when you add you twitter account to Wefollow.

Add your twitter account. You are now done, wrong. Within the various tags that identify your company, you need to go back to the home page and where it says, “enter a tag”, and enter one of your tags that you have researched. Now you want to get followers.

There are different tactics to get a lot of followers fast. This article is not about that. Targeted followers and doing so in the niche that can benefit your business is the best practice. I first choose the education tag. I personally went through and selected people I thought would benefit my company, but also would be interesting to communicate with. Social Networking has to have a personal component, and then it can have a business component. Twitter has a limit of 1000 people a day that you can follow. Remember people are either going to follow you or forget about you. If you are trying to create a legitimate social networking identity, don’t go overboard and give yourself 2-3 weeks to go through all your tags and create a targeted social network “The Right Way”. I spent a couple hours per day on Wefollow and my twitter account building a targeted niche. Tip: Not all Twitter users under the tags you have selected are right for your business, actually look at their page and make a decision.

My plan for 1World, LLC is developing and implementing a yearlong strategy, establishing a social networking identity(2 weeks), with the above mentioned, plus much more. Then we will integrate established Twitter and Facebook Badges into existing websites to stay connected with customers. Moving forward, Facebook and Twitter will be managed on a daily basis. The goals for the 2^nd month are going to be article marketing and integration within the social network framework, which will be a part of Part #2 of Social Network Marketing, “The Right Way”. The 3^rd month will consist of creating flash movies to leverage YouTube and the integrating into our social networking platforms. This is the end of part one in a series about Social Network Marketing, “The Right Way”. There is much more detail that was specific to my experience and other strategies that I incorporated along, the way, and we will discuss them in Part #2 of Social Network Marketing, “The Right Way”.