social media marketing | Julia's Virtual Assistant Service

Most people ask the wrong questions when talking with marketers: “How can you make money off social networks?”

The value is placed on social networks such as Facebook, Pinterest, Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn, Mixx, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Twitter and Flikr, while ignoring the real reason these networks were setup and how you can use those ideas to help your business……

The top social networking websites which are Facebook, Twitter, and now Pinterest were founded as a way to stay in touch with friends and family and to meet new people online that all share the same ideas. LinkedIn has a similar slant – it is great for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to keep track of their contacts for hiring / outsourcing. Flicker is just a blindingly simple tool for sharing photos.

The success of social networks marks a dynamic shift in how people are using the Internet. We have evolved from just searching for information to creating and participating in social spaces with other individuals through the Internet. This model is based upon the hive mentality where people identify themselves as part of a group with similar likes and interests that draw them together.

Social networks make viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing much easier than before. The best use of social networks is not to make money ‘directly’ off them, but to harness their marketing potential and to use them to market your own business. The best way to do that is to optimize your website (including the process of link building) for your target keywords.

Online social networks present an efficient platform for you to use in the spread of your marketing message. In addition, they are also a great tool for getting tons of visitors and thousands of page views to your site.

What this all means is that you need to devote more of your attention towards how you can leverage the traffic you do receive from these sources. To do that, you should allow your visitors to create their own social network centered on your niche topic. The power of this cannot be missed since social networks allow for multiple points of connections between almost anyone on Earth, giving them the ability to find, share, enjoy, and track anything and everything that tickles their fancy.

Social network marketing works in the exact same fashion, except people choose to provide your link without being asked to do so, and places like del.ici.ous, Digg, Blogpulse, and Technorati give them the ability to do that. In offline terms, that means turning towards your friends and family to ask for their opinions. Online, it means turning towards a group of trusted people whose opinions and recommendations you value.

In fact, in lots of cases, you’ve probably done some research on your own, using the traditional search engine marketing model and then turned to a social network that you’re a part of to validate your findings and complete your research by getting their experiences and opinions about the topic. This is social network marketing at work in its purest form.

Online social networks provide the platform needed to speak out (if they are so inclined) or to simply watch the conversations as they happen.

Is social media marketing a daunting task to your business? Social media marketing is a great tool, if you know how to do it correctly. A lot of business coaches recommend that small businesses delve into social media marketing. So the business owner sets up the Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account. So now what? The business coach recommends that you send status updates at least once-a-day. They recommend that you should send tweets at least several times a day.

Now, what are you going to send status updates about? What are you going to tweet about? It is recommended that you don’t always send status updates and tweets about specials of your business. It is recommended that you should send status updates and tweets regarding what you are doing in your community, or what special events you are attending in your community. Do you sponsor a little league team? A little league hockey team? A soccer team? These are perfect topics to send status updates about or to tweet about. Let everyone know on your fan page what those events are and how they can help sponsor the same team.

Has there been a new restaurant that just opened up in your community? Well, visit the new restaurant and then give a status update of how your visit was, the food, the service. Let your fans know if you enjoyed the restaurant or not.

If you have children you can also send status updates and tweets about what your children are doing in school. Mix these status updates and tweets in with some tweets about new things that is going on with your business. This is a great way for people to get to know you, have a relationship with you, build trust with you and your business. The best way to get business is from people who know, like and trust you those are the people will do business with you.

Now, how are you going to get all of this done? Well, there are virtual assistants in the work force like myself who will schedule tweets and status updates for you. A virtual assistant can also submit your articles to different article submission sites. This way you can do your work while your status updates and tweets get posted. Don’t be leary about outsourcing these tasks to a virtual assistant, we are just like an administrative assistant, but just do it virtually from our fully functional office.

If you would like to know more please feel free to email me by clicking here.