You are probably familiar with social media by now. Twitter, Facebook, whatever-space, etc., etc. Do you use it? I don’t use it on a personal level very often, but of course I have my own personal accounts, but I don’t like to use them for IM. I feel bad shilling things to my friends – I’d rather preserve those accounts for what I think their legit purposes are – to communicate on a personal level without selling something. So how can you use social media for business pursposes? After all, you hear it all the time that such and such guru is using social media to make huge bank. Well, some do – but they already have built their reputation as a marketer and when people accept them as friends on facebook or follow them on twitter – they know what they are going to get – sales pitches intermingled with IM lifestyle tweets and such.
If you are like me though, this is not the case – legitimate friends have signed up to find out what I am doing – and not expecting some sorts of sales pitches. But I do use social media in all campaigns that I run. I used to do it through some blackhat tactics involving multiple alias accounts, but no longer do that. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very powerful method and can generate great income, but it gets old having to created unique user ids and shuffling ips so that you don’t get banned. Don’t get me wrong, I am still using alias accounts – but because of the way I use them, they last and are not looked at as spam accounts.
If you want to use facebook to promote something, start a fanpage and build up a strong base – offer legitimate content on a regular basis and then throw your pitch in there every once in a while. I’d say you try something on the order of give, give, give, take – give great information a few times in a row and then pitch – how many time you do it will depend on your market….but it will all come down to testing and seeing which works best.
While I do run a few fan pages, I have turned to the second tier social media sites which are known as social bookmarking for expanding my base of exposure. Of course you’ve heard of those – stumble, digg, delicious, etc. These sites do not carry the weight they once did as Google knows that lots of us use them to spam bookmarks in order to gain backlinks. Besides, what will your measily bookmark do to gain you any strength in the SERPs? Not likely much, that is why I use services that multiply my efforts and use other people to bookmark my sites.
There are two that I use and recommend highly. One is a pay-only site (no free option), but the has a free option in addition to paid options – which is great for people on tight budgets just looking to start out in IM. Both of these services leverage the power of their members by having their members share the bookmarks of other members. For the best explanations, visit the respective sites below for a full overview.
Think about it though, you are putting yourself in what is effectively a co-op of people looking to promote their own sites by promoting the sites of others who in turn promote theirs. It is a very effective method for bookmarking. I have been and still use Onlywire which works well, but it really is only myself bookmarking my own sites – really not very effective. Adding in a whole army of others to push my bookmarks has made a tremendous difference.
SocialAdr is by far and away the best bookmarking tool that I have come across for those who don’t really have any money to spend on promotion. You can go and sign up for free and start submitting your own bookmarks once you have bookmarked other people’s sites at least 8 times – not a bad trade off. You also have the opportunity to upgrade for more available monthly bookmarks. If you have several sites, this is definitely the way to go, but try it out first with the free version and see what you think.
Synnd is the ultimate paid bookmarking tool (that I’ve used) because it leverages over 800 members (and growing) to bookmark and even Digg your sites. SocialAdr doesn’t have Digg as one of their bookmarks at this time, but Synnd does and the power of Digg has been seen time and time again. Just do a search about article that have hit the front page of Digg and the viral nature of that article – the income potential is immense. Now I am in no way saying that will get to the first page of Digg if you use Synnd, but the possibility of it is increased simply by the nature of many members Digging your submission. How you submit, and how creative you are (viral potential) is up to you. This brings me to another point about Synnd is that there are different ways in which you can submit your site/article and it is dependent on the type of content you are submitting. Of course you should bookmark everything, but some content is definitely geared toward social media and is worthy of “tweeting” – imagine your content being re-tweeted dozens or even hundreds of times – the traffic benefits could be enormous. When you sign up for Synnd, they give you a link to the “Synnd Best Practices” pdf guide which clearly describes the different types of submissions.
So in a nutshell, you can and should use social media to promote your business. How you do it depends on many factors such as your product, your comfort with promotion, and your comfort with breaking rules (like multiple Facebook pages). For many of us, utilizing social bookmarking is a great way to promote our sites, but be aware that the benefits are limited and need to be part of a much larger overall plan to drive traffic.
Before I end this article, I am going to thank you for reading the whole article by giving you a piece of very valuable advice that you have likely already heard. But, like most information given in the realm of IM, this recommendation is often “heard” but not acted on and that is what is probably the first and still one of the most effective ways to use social media out there – forums. Forums are what I consider the first of the social media sites and are still extremely effective. Many of us have made lots of money by utilizing the power of forums. Unlike twitter or facebook, people in a forum are typically very interested in the topic of the forum and right there you have a built in, laser targeted audience. Utilize your signature to promote your site, but make sure that you actually contribute to the community. To make the most of your signature, try to get in at the beginning of a discussion and most people have the tendency to read the first few post and then skip to the end. Also, start a thread – that way you ensure you are at the top. Don’t do it as blatant self promotion – add value and you will be perceived as someone that can be trusted – you will get much more click-thoughs on your signatures if you do this. Try it – it works…..and it is FREE!
I really like synnd, I have started using it on some of my ebay store sites and it has made a big difference in traffic. Like everything though, you have to use it properly or you won’t get the results. First time I saw your blog – pretty nice.
i tried http://clippinx.com before they relaunched their site and made about $3 a day, not much but enough to spend my monthly earnings on a nice dinner with my girlfriend