So you have a Facebook page and set up a Twitter account and not only nothing is happening with your business now you are wasting valuable sales time dealing with social networking.

Social media marketing can be hard work but it does pay off if done right. here are some tips and facts to get you going in the right direction.

Start by looking at your business, products and or services and identify a target market for it, remember it's not about getting the attention of a million people that are not interested on your product but rather a decent amount of people that are interested on your products or can benefit from your services.

Social media marketing is not just about selling it's also about building an online

relationship between your company and products and your clients which in term will talk to other people online about your company and products.
In reality is online word of mouth which is also refer as viral marketing through social media but i think I'm going to rename it " word of mouse" what you think?

Social networking versus online spamming.

Did you noticed the amount of people just plain spamming on the net? most times they are legit business thinking they are social networking and they believe that by constantly harassing people they are branding their company, in a way the are, they are becoming well known as internet spammers. This harmful marketing practices is also being offered as a service by some marketing companies, it's like paying somebody to give you and your business a bad name.

Now that you understand social media marketing a bit better let's talk about some positive practices to build online business branding and better customer reach.

Lets talk Facebook for a second and ask your self an honest question, do you need a Facebook fan page? I have 23 websites but only two of them have Fan pages because i think from a marketing perspective it's a big turn off when you see a fan page or a group that only has less the 100 users or fans.

Having said that, you got to start somewhere right? so planing a good page containing some useful information and doing regularly updates is a good starting point, take this article as an example, nowhere here i'm trying to sell you our services but rather help you do it your self.

Why? you may ask and the answer is simple, nobody will ever care more or represent your company better that you do and if my article help you grow your company somewhere along the lines you might no have time to do this your self and more than likely you can now afford our services, so chances are we'll have a coffee somewhere and talk business.

On the other hand if you are looking for information on social media marketing i suspect you want to do it your self, so why not help you anyways that's what real social networking it's all about.

Create awareness about your business and products and people will remember you and call you when they need them, because i don't remember the last time somebody sold my something but somehow I'm thinking about buying stuff every day. Think about it?

Twitter... God i used to hate twitter! but guess what? it does work and there are a lot good people and business on it, the key is to learn how to properly use this massive social networking site.

Again, please ask your self this. Do you know anyone that goes to Twitter to buy something or to spend money? There are three types of Twitter users: the ones that just use it to communicate in short sentences (as it was originally intended); companies using the service to put out useful information about themselves and their products, while getting valuable customer feedback and creating online customers relations and sales leads; and the ones that just plain spam everyone they can with the famous "Check out my site" phrase.

I mean, in most cases a business website is an online business card, so it's like someone standing on a corner, just handing out business cards for no reason. And speaking of business cards, I have a rule about them. I will never hand out a business card unless I'm asked for one, and guess what? 99% of my business cards generate a phone call sooner or later.

Going back to the "Check out my site" phrase, I encourage you to confront these people or at least let them know that they are not getting anywhere and just bothering people. I find some of them haven't even thought about it, they are just doing it because "someone" told them that's what they are supposed to do on Twitter.

A while back I had somebody private message me on one of the 14 Twitter accounts I manage with this "Check out my site" line. I replied, "Is it broken?", and the person replied back saying, "No, it's working fine". I replied, "Then why should I check it out?" and he said, "Because it's cool." I just hit Block and Report User for Spamming for the simple reason that I, like you, want to help clean the internet because (and just in case you haven't noticed), it's the single most powerful, mostly uncontrolled, communication and marketing tool ever known to mankind.
cheers, until next time.

Juan Fanzio The toronto SEO Team.
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