Social Media Marketing Guide – Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace to Grow Your Business

As I mentioned in one of my previous articles, Social Media has became extremely popular in the last few years.

Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube are growing faster than any other type of social communication.

Social Media is an enormous untapped source of leads, prospects and business partners for YOUR business and best of all it is FREE.

Therefore, in order to benefit from the social media madness, you will have to know how exactly to monetize this ultimate untapped source of potential business partners.

This is exactly what I am going to be covering today. I want to show you exactly what you need to do in order to generate results with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace.

However, Before I get into the specific details of how you should be using each one of the mentioned above sites, I would like to point out one thing. The ultimate purpose of every single social media website is Relationship Building. This is the sole purpose you should be driven by when you join a group on Facebook or sending out a Tweet.

Relationship Building is an essential ingredient to a Successful Internet Marketing Business and the sooner you grasp this concept the better.

Let’s get started!

MySpace

Only a year ago, MySpace was the biggest and fastest growing community on the Internet with more than 240 Million registered users. Today MySpace has lost it’s popularity with the users but it hasn’t lost it with the search engines.

To this day, MySpace is one of the first sources Google turns to when in need of information. What this means is that you can use it for your benefit by creating different MySpace profiles to generate more Search Engine Traffic for your particular business/opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong here, it doesn’t mean that you must use it only for that. You still have the opportunity to socialize on MySpace quite effectively, but right now, the main benefit of MySpace in my eyes is the SEO juice that you can squeeze out of it.

Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length, which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them also known as followers.

Twitter is an amazing social network, which really qualifies for the expression “Social Media Madness”. If you don’t know what I mean, just get yourself over four thousand followers, as I did, and you will see exactly what I mean. My Twitter home page is pure madness and socializing on Twitter without a client is not an option anymore.

Nevertheless, what makes Twitter unique besides the 140 character limit is the ability to Drive Massive Viral Traffic to Your Website.

Twitter is the easiest tool to drive traffic with especially if you are running a blog or a newsletter, it has an insane Viral Power Potential to it.

If you ever heard an expression “Word of Mouth Marketing” and did not know what it mean, than Twitter explains it very well. Just imagine if your Tweet with a link back to your site goes viral. Imagine the tweet being ReTweeted about 300 times. Imagine if each of those ReTweets only generated 3-4 clicks at a time, how much traffic would you get?

That’s right-A LOT!

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google.

YouTube, being the biggest video sharing network online, is a great place to do some video marketing. But Why is Video Marketing so damn important? Why is it so Crucial that you do it? Yes, that’s right! Relationship Building.

Can you think of a better way of establishing a relationship with a complete stranger? What can be more powerful when it comes down to building trust with another person on the internet than video? What can make more impact on that person than watching You move, listen to You talk and hearing Your thoughts coming out of Your mouth instead of reading them on his 15” laptop screen?

If you can think of a better way of doing it(besides live conversation with a web cam, of course) than please, be my guest and reveal it to me, because to this day, I haven’t found something better then Video Marketing.

Facebook

A Harvard University student originally founded Facebook with couple of his roommates in order to create a virtual community exclusive to the Harvard University attendees. Website membership was initially limited but later expended to other colleagues until later on Facebook became available to anyone aged 13 and over.

Right now Facebook is one of the biggest social communities with over 200 million active users. However, what makes it different from MySpace, Twitter and YouTube than? Why is it so essential for your Social Media Domination plan?

Well, personally, I can’t answer that question with a specific benefit. Facebook is just a great place to Build STRONG, BULLETPROOF, ROCK SOLID Relationships. I haven’t yet found a community where people are more open and ready to socialize with complete strangers all over the planet.

To me, Facebook is like another huge family. I truly admire and respect every single one of my Facebook friends. It is so easy to get to know people and connect with them on Facebook. It is so easy to get lost in endless chats and conversations there.

I have many of my friends, simply leading another Life there! Facebook is very easy to fall in love with and it definitely leaves other Social Networks in the dust when it comes down to building a strong long lasting relationship with a complete stranger.

Having shared these insight with you, I only wish to point out one more time that your main goal on any single social media site and in every single social community should be first to Build Relationships while driving traffic and generating leads second.

How to Connect With Your Customers Via Social Media

The development of new online destinations for information sharing and interactive communication by and between family and friends as well as professional associates is consistently cited as the driving force behind Web 2.0. Termed “Social Media”, the trend has created abundant opportunities to distribute high quality health and disease education content, while creating community and entirely new opportunities for collaboration between your business and its customers.

One of the web’s most recognized information sources, Wikipedia, defines “Social media marketing” as a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube as well as many independent subject matter blogs. In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees).

To capitalize on this emerging trend, your business needs to develop a comprehensive Social Media Marketing strategy. By developing and implementing a carefully planned social media strategy, you can take advantage of current media trends, to accomplish multiple objectives including broadening the reach of your brand and providing an interactive platform for communication with and between your business and your customers.

As with all things web, things change rapidly and having and maintaining active “Social Media Marketing” strategy takes work and cooperative effort from multiple areas of the your organization including management, operations, and communications. Through minimal effort you can yield extraordinary results and form an effective plan for increasing site traffic and brand awareness for your business

Development of the your business’s social marketing strategy is suggested as the first step in defining an online media plan to boost your online marketing efforts. While social networking sites offer access to millions of targeted individuals, it should be viewed as a tool for driving traffic to corporate owned sites such as.ORG and.COM where similar features could be incorporated and where you can guide the visitor experience in a way that creates a deeper more meaningful engagement between your business and the customers.

Establishing a close engagement with your customers through social Marketing, ensures your business truly understands what they want and need. Truly the easiest way to sell is to find out what your customers truly want and need, then offer it to them at a competitive price. The opportunities are boundless, with the right strategy, you can be making customers for life, every time you tweet.

Online Marketing Using Twitter and Social Media Marketing

Today, every smart business knows that social media marketing is the new yellow pages, and twitter marketing is right at the top. Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day is an awesome tool to promote and grow your business on the internet. This book makes it extremely easy to follow and implement this online marketing strategy. By using the hour-a-day homework assignments, and following every trick in this book, you will be able to take your business to a new level.

In the first few chapters, you will get a rundown on how to market your business with twitter, setting up goals and other exercises to help you create action plans for you to follow. This book is not just a list of suggestions with very little results. As you move through it, you will start seeing tangible results and reaping the rewards of online marketing.

After chapter 3, the book makes a transition from a text book to a social media marketing guide as it goes into Part 2. This section consist of an hour by hour, day to day, and week to week training to advance you from a Twitter marketing rookie to a serious power user. The author does a very good job at clearing out all the noise of the web, and consolidates the necessary requirements a business person needs to know about online marketing. This book does exactly what it claims to do which is help you market your products through Twitter.

Another thing that makes this book worthwhile is all the resources it provides to the reader. Though the intended audience for this book is mainly companies looking to use Twitter as another form of online marketing, the average Twitter user can easily find value in it as well. The layout is well thought out and easy to navigate.

With so many Twitter experts on the net, it’s refreshing and helpful to get practical how-to advice from someone who has clearly guided others to achieve real business results from Twitter marketing. Despite your current knowledge of Twitter, you will be able to easily unlock new applications and methods to improve your results. As your comfort level rises, you will learn how to leverage this powerful tool as an online marketing platform. This book is meticulously organized and presented in a step-by-step manner that makes it easy for beginners as well as experienced Twitter marketers. If you desire to be among the Twitter superstars, this book will undoubtedly help you find your way.