You have your foundation. You have spent some time building a conversation with potential clients through your blog. But, now the questions are… How do you get people (and robots) to READ your blog? How do you get people (and robots) to VISIT your website? How do people (and robots) know about either of them?
(This is part 4 of 4 - See Previous Post: Nothing is Said Without Emotion.)
The answer is social networking. To put it simply, it is business networking as you already know it, but on steroids.
You have already heard of many different social networks on the internet. The list of social networking websites is immense and grows larger every day, but there are four main networks on which you must maintain a presence. The four are: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linked in.
Google has indexed more than 620 million groups on Facebook, delivers real-time index results for Facebook and Twitter, and out-right bought YouTube for 1.65 billion back in 2006! In fact, Jake Wengroff recently told TechNewsWorld (October 2010) "Every minute, 600,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook"… that’s 864 billion pieces of information being shared every day on Facebook alone. Linked In had 70 million users back in June 2010 and Twitter has 175 million users as of October 2010. There is no sign of their growth slowing down. Is social media a fad?
You can spend time working on profiles for 10-50 social networks, but the fact remains that every single one of your potential clients is using or at least familiar with one of these four networks. In fact, 18% of internet users have entered a commercial transaction based solely on something they saw within their online social network. Keep your focus on your website, your blog and master your presence on these four networks and YOU WILL BE SEEN by not only your target market, but also the robots that crawl these powerful social networks. But, where to begin? How do they work together?
Build an Auto-Pilot System That Talks to the Social Networks for You
On Facebook, start with your personal profile, build a business profile and create a mini-website within Facebook that brings your website, blog and voice to the powerful social world within Facebook. Read more about Profiles, Fan Pages, and Groups… Oh My!
Using WordPress and plugins like Simple Facebook Connect and Simple Twitter Connect... every time you post a blog, it will automatically be shared with Facebook and also be tweeted to Twitter. Each and every blog post will update your page status on Facebook (with apps such as RSS Graffiti), your twitter status and your LinkedIn network.
Create videos to engage your target market. Building videos is easier than ever with tools such as animoto. Simply drop in a few pictures, add a few lines of text and click ‘create video’. In just minutes you can one-click-upload your video to YouTube and have it automatically appear on your blog and in your social networks by using WordPress plugins such as feedwordpress.
Once you have your auto-pilot system in place and your entire network linked together, you can simply sit back, blog, and post videos knowing that your content is hitting all of the major social networks, is being indexed by Google and most importantly is being read by potential clients that are already looking for YOU.
Nothing is gained without a system!
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