Are You a Social Media Marketer or a Social Media Maniac?

Some people think that if they just get a few thousand followers on Twitter and a Facebook account with a several hundred friends, they’re ready for their marketing blitz, and people will soon be chasing them down, wallets open, ready to buy their product, service or join their business or affiliate program.

Then they start  sending auto-DMs in Twitter with links to their affiliate products, or ‘***GET in NOW on the GROUND FLOOR!!! ***’. Their Tweets are a torrent of spam links, and they even use @ replies to get attention when their DMs are ignored. They have their auto-Tweeter setting up spam-campaigns left and right.

Then, feeling all pumped up, they ramp up their ‘marketing’ efforts by sending messages to all their Facebook friends, writing on their profile walls about the hot new biz-op, or how they can generate 8000 leads a day with their lead generating system. WHAT?

This is akin to the car salesman down the street popping into your home without knocking (wearing his obnoxious toxic blue polyester suit) during an intimate cocktail party with your friends and spouting out how he has the best deal in town!

It’s still hard to believe that people think that this is ‘marketing’ , and expect to be taken seriously. But it’s just a matter of jumping in before learning a few basic ideas of what Social Media Marketing really means.

The person in this case does not realize is that they’ll immediately be taken for an armature, never be taken seriously, and will soon alienate everyone on their list. And that list is probably not even a targeted one, had they even identified their target market.

Stop Wasting Time and Effort

First of all, the key word here is Social. That is, person-to-person, individuals who know what ‘friends‘ are, usually ignore commercials, and in most cases hate to be sold.

Just because you are sitting behind a computer does not make them any less human. Or any less intelligent.

So in order to be liked and trusted, build a valuable network, and be the marketer rather than the maniac, there are just a few simple guidelines to follow:

Define Your Target Market – In many cases, the person jumping into social media for marketing purposes has not taken the time to define their target market.

Once you determine your what your target market is, join the social networks where you are most likely to connect with these people,  join groups and participate in forum discussions, and above all, add value over promotion. Do not spam your new ‘friends’ or you’ll find yourself ignored, or worse, blocked.

Create your Funnel – If you expect to be gaining potential customers or associates from these connections then you should capture these from a central point.  Places like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have ‘connections’ but these are not ‘opted in’ and have not yet given you permission to approach them with anything you may have to offer.

By providing value, you will eventually find people opting-in , opening the door for further, more targeted communication with them via an auto responder. You may want to provide value over several venues but it may be best to centralize these in a blog or web page, and then providing links back to this ‘central hub’ from all of your social networks. Your call to action for the opt-in should be where your value is located. This is essentially creating your marketing funnel.

Keep it Simple – While you add the task of online social networking to your usual business activities, efficiency is going to be challenging. Just because it doesn’t cost anything to do social media marketing, doesn’t mean that it is necessarily free. It can be a huge time hog. Make the best of your time by avoiding distraction and using some key tools.

Start with just one to three social networks, and stay away from the likes of Facebook applications and games, they are time wasters and can be addictive. Watch your time in Twitterville, YouTube, or social bookmarking sites, as these can be a vortex. It is very enticing to look at a dozen links, videos and pages, and next thing you know an hour or two is lost (although you may find an occasional nugget to use to add value for an upcoming post or video).

Use tools such as social bookmarking sites such as Stumble.com, Digg.com, and Del.icio.us to increase your exposure and SEO. Make tagging your blog to these sites easy using clickable buttons (plugins often provide these). Learn about and use account management sites such as Socialoomph, FriendFeed, and Ping.fm to consolidate your posts.

Listen – Remember you are in a relationship business first and foremost! And that means your primary focus should be on your prospect, your potential customer or business partner. Your most important skill when face to face, listening, carries into the realm of social media. Learn about your contacts, and find out what it is that they need.

Learn how to compose yourself and what to say to people when the opportunity does arise to mention your product, service or business opportunity. You don’t want to have them running in the opposite direction from what they perceive as another attempt to ’sell’ them. And if you are at all negative, unaccommodating, or desperate, you’ll quickly turn them off.

Interpersonal communication skills include not only listening and speaking, but particularly in marketing, being clear and concise with your written message.  Marketers should absolutely be good writers, and this is not an impossible skill for someone even if they are currently poor at writing.

Writing a catchy headline as well as keeping interesting content in a post are both important. Headlines should grab attention and the post should be interesting enough but not overly wordy or disjoint. As long as you are enthusiastic, educational and/or entertaining, you’ll have an audience.

Just be yourself and let people get to know, like and trust you you while you get to know them and understand their needs, and you can’t go wrong!

“Relationships Are The Root Of All Business.” Ty Bennett

Wishing you Every Happiness and Success!

Vicki Berry
http://MLMTrainingResource.com