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Telling the Truth About Social Marketing

By Robert Greenshields

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 13Mar2008
Word count: 441
Viewed: 205 time(s)

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There's a lot of conflicting advice from Internet marketing experts on how to profit from the popularity of social marketing.

Social marketing is about growing your business through user-driven websites like youtube, facebook and digg (plus hundreds more).

Some advice says you should create a large number of different user identities on many sites and then start promoting your own sites to drive extra traffic.

The alternative view is that you should select one or two relevant sites carefully, building a personal profile on them and contributing value to the communities before even thinking about marketing anything of your own.

The problem is that both approaches can work - and perhaps the first may even show the fastest results.

But, leaving aside that it risks getting you banned by the sites, it seems a bit like joining 10 different local networking groups like the Chamber of Commerce or BNI - and rushing round them all just handing out order forms rather than concentrating on building strong relationships in one or two.

And, as most social websites are not business-focused - indeed many members have strong negative feelings about any kind of marketing or selling - it's more like running around the golf club or the health club asking everyone to buy your products.

In Kevin Hogan's book the Psychology of Persuasion, he describes the "Law of Friends", which states that someone is more likely to do what you ask if they believe you have their best interests in mind.

This arguably applies even more in the rapidly changing online environment. People find it harder to know who to trust so they are looking for someone who will help them rather than sell to them.

The great advantage of the development of online social marketing and networking is that it gives business owners all over the world access to a much wider pool of potential contacts than just relying on local organizations.

It's clear that this type of networking and marketing will grow in importance but that most business owners have not yet started to take advantage of it.

These are some of the keys to success with social marketing:

Define your objectives: Decide what you want e.g. contacts or information.

Be selective: Focus on your objectives, don't get distracted.

Manage your time: Set strict time limits on how long you spend doing this each day.

Give before you expect to receive: Contribute to the communities.

Be consistent: Visit your chosen sites regularly.

Social marketing is a fast developing field that's still in its early days. Spending a little time to learn how it can help you build your business could be very rewarding.

Robert Greenshields is a marketing success coach who helps entrepreneurs and independent professionals to develop the right mindset and marketing strategies for higher profits. Sign up for his 7 free secrets of making your marketing more persuasive

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