GO FOR REGULAR EFFORTS
This is one rule that could be applied to every single type of marketing you do. And just because the social networking kind might seem more casual, it doesn’t mean it should be on your side of things.
These sites allow you to attract followers. They also allow you to follow other people. Have you ever heard the saying ‘give and you shall receive’? If you have, you’ll be delighted to know that this applies to the social networking sites as well.
Your primary focus is to generate a large following of people who will be interested in what you have to sell. But to do that you need to attract attention – and sometimes the best way to do that is to become interested in other people.
Think of it like this. If you have a product that has to be sold to people face to face, what would you do? Would you go out and talk to people about it? Or would you sit at home in the hope that they would come and find you?
This is very similar to what will happen if you get your profile ready for action on a social networking site and you don’t go out and find people yourself. Start by looking for individuals who have the same interest as you (or at least the same interest that ‘the business person you’ has!).
You can then start following them or become a friend of theirs. This is by far the best way to start building your network on each site. You will typically find that a proportion of the people you start following will check out your profile and start following you in return. And since you’re all sharing the same interests you should find that they will take a look at your website as well.
An active start is certainly the best way to get results as quickly as possible. And this means being regular with your efforts. If you’re setting up a website, you can get away with putting in a lot of effort to get it up and running and then just tweak it every once in a while.
But if you are going to try social networking for your marketing efforts, you will need to keep at it. People won’t follow someone who only pops up every couple of months.
