Over the past few years the main focus for many small business and home based business owners has been on social media marketing. The great thing about social media for business is that it gives you a way to be in constant contact with past, current and future customers but there is a problem with it and that is the fact that many people who want to get started just cannot decide how and where to actually get started.
Most of these business owners know that they should be using tools such as Facebook and Twitter to connect and build relationships with people but they cannot work out how to do it so that their online businesses will benefit.
Let's take a quick look at the best way to get started with social media marketing from a business point of view.
To begin with you must have a plan. This plan needs to incorporate not only how and where you intend setting up profiles but also the various methods you will use them on a daily basis.
So that you can set up a plan you must take a look at a variety of social sites and see what they have to offer. It is important to ascertain if your target market is active on any of these social sites and you can do this by checking out what your competition is using, as there is a good possibility that your competitors are already using some of these sites for their own online home based businesses, so by studying what they are doing is a good place to begin.
Once you have discovered which social sites would be best for you to be using your next step is to get your business profile on to each of these sites. Begin with the most popular ones such as Facebook and Twitter because with these it is highly unlikely that you will miss out on your target market.
After taking care of the larger and more popular sites you can then move on to some of the niche sites as well. When setting up your profile it is essential that you include a link back to your main website as well as a short introduction to what you and your online business is all about.
Remember that the main point of social websites is first and foremost the fact that they are social so it is very important that you don't come across as someone who is only interested in pushing their business and making sales.
To be effective with any of these sites you must become engaged with your target market on a more personal rather than on a strictly business and sales level.
After joining and setting up your profile you will then need to find and join groups that are being used by your target market and you can do this by searching through the various groups that are available. While not all social media websites have groups there are a large majority of them that do. Along with these groups there could also be communities and the best way to find them is by becoming "friends" or "following" people who think and are in the same business as you are.
By discovering what they are talking about and doing you will be in a better position to see how the whole community interacts and once you get the feel of the tone of the community then you need to become engaged with them.
This is the point at which you must begin to add valuable information to the general discussion. Keeping this in mind you can in a very subtle and minimal way include a bit of a sales pitch. Your main purpose there is not to sell your products directly; the goal is to become known and brand yourself and by building good relationships that can give huge benefits well into the future both with customers and other online businesses.
If you follow these easy steps you will quickly and effectively integrate yourself and your online home based business into the social sites community.
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Michelle Jayes writes articles aimed at helping people to build successful legitimate online businesses. Click here to follow her on http://twitter.com/MichelleJayes or visit her website http://www.online-income-business.com
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