Social Media for Marketing you and your Business

Social media marketing can be extremely powerful in promoting you and your business, however there is a right and a wrong way to use it as a marketing tool.

But lets just explain what exactly is social media marketing. A term used to promote your business or products through Internet sites like face-book, my-space, and forums that might also allow advertisements or any online communities where there is a gathering of people that interact  with each other or form groups etc. Or where your target market may congregate  like specific related Forums.

The List can be quite endless. Right now a very popular site is Twitter where thousands of people write short messages and post on the Twitter site for other twitter friends, associates, and colleagues  can see and read and these can be posted to other like minded sites. This form of advertising is  known as viral marketing spreading out far and wide to other areas of the community online.

So you can imagine how powerful this could be for a business that sells products or services, that can effectively be marketed through a social media strategy.

So how would we implement a social media marketing strategy.

Joining sites of course is your first step but don’t get bogged down to much with to many, i would recommend you pick say three or four otherwise you could spend all your time not knowing which site you should be on it can be very time consuming if you over do the sites

Face-book, Twitter, Linkedin and my-space all these sites have large gatherings and incorporate groups that might be of benefit to you in business. I would also add associates and join groups within these sites that have a lot of interest that you like to engage in not just for your business.

You will need to set up your profile enter your interests your work your photos and any other information you feel is relevent where people might take an interest. You will then want to gather friends and start to listen, engage and facilitate in conversations within the community. You want a presence where people will want to know more.

Your main goal will be to attract people who are asking questions relating to your business interests, from here you can start to drive these people to your blog or web site where you can further engage there interest.

Social media is a powerful weapon in your marketing strategy use it wisely and you will be rewarded

Learning how to use social media for marketing you and your business is a powerful tool the 30 day and 90 day marketer is just such a tool that can help you, and the Renegade Professional shows in depth click by click training in all areas of using social media marketing to attract clients into your business.

Resources section below for the social media marketing  i will cover in further articles but for now learn how to utilise social media for your business both the 30 day marketer and Renegade Professional will teach you these methods effectively.

Content sharing  Squidoo

Articles  enzine articles

Book marking  Digg, stumbleupon, delicious etc

Social sites Face-book, My space, etc

Blogs or web site like SBI all in one

Video Sharing you tube etc

Setting up your marketing funnel

Capture pages

PPC advertising

Books for social media

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business

martin leyton

The secret of powerful headlines

by David Garfinkel

The ultimate copy writing course

How a few chosen words can do magic for your business

It’s early morning in a San Francisco café. I’m sitting here away from my office, so I can focus completely on writing this article.

I’m staring intently at a page of handwritten notes – complete with arrows and boxes… famous headlines from throughout history… and all sorts of other intricate details.

Then it happens.

The little red light starts flashing. You know the one I mean – the one on my BlackBerry. I can’t ignore it. I simply have to see what it is.

It’s an email (duh). Of course.

From Perry Marshall, the Google guru.

Subject line:

So you want to get more customers….

I click the round button on the Blackberry to open it up and read it. I’m excited! 12 tips, 6 with asterisks. I wonder: What’s he up to?

Then I take a deep breath and sit back, before I break out laughing. Way too loud. A worker in the café looks my way to make sure I haven’t lost it completely. She decides I’m just laughing too loud but otherwise okay, and goes back to busing tables.

I’m laughing because the very thing I’m trying to figure out how to write about, just happened to me. And it was done so well that I never saw it coming. It blew right by me before I realized:

- what had happened, and

- how my BlackBerry had just provided an exquisite “teachable moment.”

You see, the seven words Perry put in his subject line: “So you want to get more customers…. “also functioned flawlessly as an awesomely effective headline.

Perry’s subject line/headline also bears many of the qualities that make it a perfect example for this article:

1. It sounds like conversation. (Even though this was a mass email to his list, the seven words sound like something someone might really say.)

2. All the words are short, except for 1. (6 out of 7 are only 1 syllable and have 4 letters or less. The seventh one, “customers,” is 3 syllables and has 9 letters. It is a long word, but it is rich with meaning and often on every businessperson’s mind.)

3.  It attracts attention and causes curiosity. Because it’s about something I’m interested in myself and something I also help other people with, it gets all of my focus the moment I see it.

4. It implies a desirable reward for reading further. It doesn’t come right out and say so, but it implies that when you keep reading, you will learn something worthwhile about getting new customers for your business.

5. It prompts you to read the next sentence. That’s what it did to me. It got me (and would get nearly any other business-oriented reader) to take action by keeping reading.  With my Blackberry, that can’t happen until I take the action of pressing on the round button that opens the email.

In other formats, like on a Web page, a good headline would simply keep me reading. On Twitter, a good tweet might get me to click on a link. On a Web video, a good opening line would convince me to keep watching.

It’s the same idea in all cases – a good headline captures your attention and holds onto it.

What do other good headlines look like?

Here are some of the “famous, well-known headlines” you may have heard of before. As you read them, see how many of the 5 characteristics they have, or would have if you saw them above some text on the Web or in a print ad:

- How to Win Friends and Influence People

- If You’re Out of the Market Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

- The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches

- See How Easily You Can Learn to Dance This Way

- I’ve Got to Get This Off My Chest Before I Explode!

Famous advertising guru of yore, David Ogilvy, once said: “When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” That is because scientific tests have shown that 80% of the effectiveness of an ad is in the headline.

It has been said that we are in an “attention economy” these days, and your wealth is directly proportional to your ability to get and keep the attention of your prospects and customers.

If that is true, then it stands to reason that the better your headlines are, the wealthier you will be.

So do you want to have the power of persuation The Ultimate Copywriting Course  learn how.

Author

David Garfinkel