November 03, 2010
This month we will continue our online marketing series and talk about how to generate leads and build a relationship with them.
Marketing Magic's Contents
- Steps to generate leads using social media sites
- Drive Users to your content
- Promote yourself virtually
- Engage in user conversations about your business and products
- Response time
- Use some traditional techniques for online interaction
Using Social Networking - one of the most powerful online tool
I have uploaded a couple of cool youtube videos on our blog to help you signup for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Click Here to check it Out
Now that you have established yourself in the social media scene; it is time to climb the steps that lead to generating prospects.
Focus on producing leads with a strong and positive presence. The golden rule for the growth and success for your business is to generate leads effectively. With the rapid growth of social networking and media sites, many business owners are looking at different strategies to use these online platforms to promote their business and finding targeted leads.
Steps to generate leads using social media sites
Using social media sites, you can determine the interests of your target audience. Conduct your research by becoming a community member. Judging by the audience response to your products; give free downloads or samples by registration (giving you their name and a contact email address).
Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites today. The best way to utilize this social media site is to post a lot of tweets especially at times when maximum users are online. Re-tweets are a great way to send your posts multiple times.
LinkedIn is a business focused social networking site. Since status updates are shown on your profile, ensure they are updated regularly. Provide good and useful content to share with other members. Consider creating a group once you have sufficient number of members.
Create interesting, informative and watchable videos and load them on YouTube. This could develop a fan following. Try to promote the videos on other sites – videojug.com, metacafe.com, vimeo.com, etc.
Who isn't on Facebook today? Millions of people across the globe are now Facebook members. Status updates are a crowd puller and show how active you are on the site. Information about your business and products should be regularly provided. Soon there will be followers and qualified leads wanting to know more about the business.
Let us take a look at some of the simple and effective methods to expand your business online using social media sites:
Drive Users to your content
Engage users by sharing content about your business. Update content constantly by sharing business ideals, products, objectives rather than sentence updates. Information provided about your business should be interesting and valuable to the viewer.
Your fans will be the judge of the information you provide. So it is good to be open minded and change your content based on their feedback
Promote yourself virtually
By now you must have your presence all over the social media scene. But remember that, your journey of promoting the products has just started. You have to invest time and effort in creating a solid profile to gain followers.
Start with having Facebook and Twitter icons on your website to show that you are a social networker. Promote your profile links on pamphlets, website, etc. Ping.fm is a great site to relay status updates on most of the prominent social networking sites at the same time.
Engage in user conversations about your business and products
For your business and its products to prosper, it is good to encourage interaction with users. Engage users in conversations relevant to your business and obtain their feedback. This exercise will help you monitor the opportunities, connect with the right people to spread the word, and understand the consumer's perception of the business and the products.
By listening to consumer feedback, you can decide on the platforms to monitor your business, products, competitors, etc.
- Always heed to the comments of users, viewers, consumers about your business and its products
- Use other methods of monitoring social networking activity using CoTweet, etc.
As you try these methods, you can gauge the audience interests. Making informed decisions based on the valuable feedback, you can reach out to potential business owners.
Response time
Listening to your consumers is the easy part, but to act on it is a whole different story. By not acting quickly, you could lose opportunities for a meaningful conversation with consumers. This could potentially dampen the chances of them trying out your brand.
Invest a few hours every week specifically for consumer interaction, response to questions and feedback with respect to social media sites. Your response must be highly informative and backed by some other interesting bits of information like an article, useful links, etc.
Use some traditional techniques for online interaction
The traditional method of network marketing is still very prominent today. Imagine how it could work when taken online. That's right, it will work wonders!! Meet people, develop a bond, communicate effectively and keep them interested in the business and its products. You can accomplish that by sending them information relevant to the products, its benefits, and methods of purchase. Every conversation thread must be sustained and could result in vast profits to the business.
Your social media presence is the best customer service you can provide the consumers. Be a genuine business owner; respond to consumer inquiries promptly and you'll generate site traffic and leads over a short period of time.
Though social media sites are a recent entrant in the Internet sector, it is here to stay. Promote your business on multiple social media sites; but also pursue other methods of promoting your business. Update your business information regularly, and post interesting and useful information for viewers. This will soon explode your business to great heights.
Until next month....Happy Networking
Troy Rocavert
