Submitted by chuck on Fri, 01/22/2010 - 15:55
Facebook, Twitter or Email Marketing
With the incredible growth of social networking sites and especially Facebook and Twitter, business people are asking “Is Email Marketing Dead?” My comment “No, but why not use all three in concert to gain the best from all of them!”
FACEBOOK:
Facebook is one of the largest social networking sites on the Internet, and it is also one of the top five most frequently visited sites. Through leveraging Facebook, you can bring incredibly high exposure to both yourself and your opportunity; however, the way you bring exposure to yourself will be different than how you bring exposure to your business opportunity. One very important thing to remember when practicing the art of Facebook marketing, you need to appear natural or you will get banned. This is where the social arts of tact and seduction come into play - keeping your marketing actions guised well enough to appear natural to Facebook. To effectively use and get the most from your time using Facebook, I suggest you follow these steps:
1. Insert Links to External Sites
The whole point of this is to give your visitors another place to learn more about you. You want your links to be visible and in prime locations on your page, but you don't want to be overbearing with it either. A couple of the key places you may want your visitors to see the links to your blog or marketing site, etc is in the "Write something about yourself." box just below where your profile pictures is shown. You will also want to have all of your links listed in the "Contact Information" section, which is under the Info Tab. This is the prime location to place your sites, if you have multiple sites you want your visitors to investigate. By default, the Contact Information links will only be shown inside the Info Tab on your profile; however, you can make them be shown on the main profile page also. To enable this, simply click on the Edit Tool in the top right corner of the "Information" box (shown just below the "Write something about yourself." box), and check the box for Website. Now your links also show on the main page of your profile, as well as in the Info Tab.
2. Get and Add Friends
You will need to be careful when it comes to adding friends. If you overdo it here by adding to many friends at once, this can flag your account and get you kicked off Facebook super fast! So again, show judgment when creating your friend list. Although having a huge list of friends is great from a marketing standpoint - a huge list is also meaningless if you don't have a relationship with that list. So take your time, I suggest to add 10 - 20 friends per day and genuinely make a connection with them when they accept your friend request. Send comments to them and get to know them personally. It will help your new friends get to know you and investigate to learn more about you.
3. Using Wall Posts
A great way to connect with your new friends is through Wall Posts. Posting comments and replies on friends walls is a great way to get to know them personally and to start a dialog; however, it's also a great marketing tool as well, when it's properly applied. When you post a comment on a friend's wall, all of that person's friends also see that you posted a comment on his/her wall. So all messages posted on friends walls go viral - so if you have something of value to share, why not leverage the viral nature of the Wall Posts and share with everybody...
4. Adding Status Updates
Status updates are similar to Wall Posts, but these are posts you make on your own wall. You can use this to let others know what you're doing right now, etc. These Status Updates also have the potential to go viral, just like the normal Wall Posts. Say you did a Status Update, but instead of just saying what's going on with you right now, you ask a question. If one of your friends replies to the questions, all of your friends and all of his/her friends are notified of the reply, etc...
TWITTER:
Twitter is the second most popular social networking site and continues to grown in popularity and is ideal to incorporate your Facebook postings. Since Twitter only allows 140 characters, you must use a short description but you can link back to your complete post. As example, you can write an interesting article/blog on your Facebook page and than “copy” it and “paste” the address on your Twitter account.
EMAIL:
For many of us, we used and still use Email to get send our marketing message to people who have “OPTED-IN” to receive our mail. Over the time, all of us have developed a considerable database of client/friends email addresses. For some of us, we use a “formated” email provider such as Constant Contact to distribute to our list a very professional appearing email/newsletter. Now, with the growth of Facebook and Twitter, we are challenging our use of email to market our products and services. I suggest YOU NOT change your email approach but modify it to take advantage of Facebook and Twitter and here is what you do:
1.Add your Facebook and twitter address to your signature (email option)
2.Invite your email list to join you on Facebook and Twitter (Give them a reason to do so)
By using all three methods of getting your message out to potential customers is fairly easy and if done correctly will be an endless source of potential subscribers for your business.