subject: How To Promote Your Business Using Social Media [print this page] Social media is here to stay and being a revolutionary force, it has taken internet marketing to levels never witnessed before, as an e-preneuer you should evaluate your strategies and prepare yourself to benefit from the social media bandwagon before it's tool late. Below I explore some of the things that e-prenuers can do to grow and expand their online ventures. Most of these require moderate investment in both time and money.
Create a business blog
Blogging hasn't lost its luster. it may no longer be featured in web 2.0. but blogging remains as one of the great ways to interactively connect with your customers. It may sound ironical that dialoguing is what powers social marketing. When it comes to matters blog, then you get exactly the equivalent of your investment in terms of time. This doesn't mean that you drive yourself nuts with posting daily entries but setting a regular schedule and having the discipline to keep it. Blog thrive on content and lack of it may drive people away. There ensure you have fresh & interesting content supply for your blog.
Photo Sharing
Photo sharing sites are a great marketing tool because of their active photo groups. Therefore, you can sign-up for an account in sites such as Flickr and be able to reach hundreds of thousands of highly targeted prospects with wonderful images of your products.
Contribute in Knowledge Exchange sites
Answering questions posted in sites such as yahoo answers is a good way to engage and market your expertise. If your business is service oriented then your knowledge is your number one marketing tool. Subscribe to as many Q&A sites as you can and start contributing, you'll sure be noticed.
Market with videos
Heard of viral videos? well, that's just one way. Modern environment is filled with affordable video capture equipments and editing software is ever getting cheaper and user-friendly. Imagine having your "how-to" methods produced in video format, or the showcasing your real-estate portfolio is motion picture! you get the point. Create compelling videos and post them online where they can be easily found and shared by others.
Make use of "Discovery" sites
Make yourself at home in sites such as Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit and Netscape, create your lists and upload them, it won't be long before others stumble upon them and initiate the magic.
Join Up
To succeed in social media marketing then you'll have to seek out your customers from where they hang out. The most common areas include yahoo and Google groups to share opinions and interests. The aforementioned groups are largely interest based. Therefore you can join in and offer your expertise, with time and based on the quality of your contribution you'll become trusted by members of the community and that a big plus to promoting yourself.
