Social Networking

[mattviatura]

Being a little bit technophobic I am at a loss as to how people use Facebook, Twitter etc to market themselves.

Am I missing something obvious?

[miniman]

http://www.siftgroups.com/blog/4-part-guide-using-...

[JohnnyPanic]

miniman said:

http://www.siftgroups.com/blog/4-part-guide-using-...

Some generally good advice in there, haven't read all four parts yet though.

Assuming this is your site I thought you might like to know that the links to other sections from within the body copy aren't working - they seem to be putting 'default' in as the domain and thus pointing to:
http://default/blog/4-part-guide-using-facebook-tw...
rather than:
http://www.siftgroups.com/blog/4-part-guide-using-...

[miniman]

Thanks, will kick someone's arse!

[mattviatura]

Thanks Miniman will have a look when I have a minute tonight - sure I'm missing a trick..

[JohnnyPanic]

A key thing to bear in mind during the whole process is the "Social" part of it.

Don't just bombard people with self-marketing stuff all the time. It's like when people come on here just to try and promote their business, they're not met favourably and don't tend to last very long!

[jon-]

Provide either something that people like reading about, or people gain from. Use your existing online channels to advertise this new stream. Simples.

If you're trying to retail something uninspiring like drains, you might have trouble ever making it work.

[10JH]

jon- said:

If you're trying to retail something uninspiring like drains, you might have trouble ever making it work.

So many people talk about social networking like it's some holy grail. I agree that for many products it won't work and will be a waste of time.

I fail to see how twitter and facebook can be useful to most companies.

I agree that becoming involved in a community that is interested in the topic is good as you can show you are an expert, not just spamming them!

[Chris_w666]

10JH said:

jon- said:

If you're trying to retail something uninspiring like drains, you might have trouble ever making it work.

So many people talk about social networking like it's some holy grail. I agree that for many products it won't work and will be a waste of time.

I fail to see how twitter and facebook can be useful to most companies.

I agree that becoming involved in a community that is interested in the topic is good as you can show you are an expert, not just spamming them!

One use I did see for Twitter was using things like amazon affiliate links and getting your followers to forward it (retweet) and if any stuff actually sells then you make a small bit of cash which is the main purpose.

You actually need to get people to follow you on twitter which means posting interesting stuff relevant to your business, same goes for Facebook etc.

[miniman]

JohnnyPanic said:

A key thing to bear in mind during the whole process is the "Social" part of it.

Don't just bombard people with self-marketing stuff all the time. It's like when people come on here just to try and promote their business, they're not met favourably and don't tend to last very long!

This is very good advice. With Twitter, for example, you should aim to have roughly as many followers as people you are following, and any attempts to "spam" your followers with blatant marketing stuff will be jumped all over.

Good example of how to get it wrong: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/103334

[deevlash]

isnt linkedin more business based?

[miniman]

deevlash said:

isnt linkedin more business based?

Very much so. Twitter is also going much more towards a business tool whilst Facebook maintains the personal end of things. Although Facebook are launching a significantly cut-down (text only) mobile version which is much more like Twitter than previously.

[Scraggles]

got a friend who runs markets, get stuff about the markets that am interested in and other random stuff, some of it nsfw but in a nice way, eg pictures of people who are wkers

not a hard sell and do go to his markets, if it was all about markets and nothing else, would be a choice of hide....