Making Time For Social Marketing

Social marketing involves taking time to do various activities such as: microblogging, social bookmarking, creating friend lists, responding to friend request, conversing with people on networks, networking with strangers, and more.

If you think you don’t have time for social networking, let’s look at some of the things that could happen if you did take a bit of time to do it:

Finding New Customers

Your potential customers are searching the net for stuff. They aren’t just landing on websites, either. They land on blogs, on forums, on social bookmarking sites, and microblogging sites. They land wherever discussions are taking place.

Discussions create a great place to sell because people want to read more than a carefully crafted sales page when they’re thinking about buying something. They want to read discussions, articles, reviews, and opinions.

Building Your Reputation

Reputation can equal trust online. This is vital when you’re trying to sell something. Participating with Social Marketing tools can help you establish yourself as a professional in your industry.

When people search for you, because they’re thinking about buying from you, you want them to find plenty of evidence supporting your claims that you know what you’re talking about.

Social Marketing sites allow you the opportunity to tell people what you’re good at. Many sites such as bookmarking, microblogging, forums, and other social sites list a bio section that’s also crawlable by search engines.Because these sites are so busy with activity, search engines may visit them multiple times a day so they’re a great vehicle for spreading news.

When someone searches for your name, for example, if you’re an Australian internet marketing guru, you want people to find profiles and articles that say so, and if people search for your product, they could find all sorts of great articles on popular sites that you’ve submitted content to.

Following Trends

If you want to know what’s happening online, the online water coolers, where people are chatting about what’s hot and what’s not, is where you should be.

One of the great perks of social media is that people are talking about the latest and greatest of everything so your few minutes a day of social networking will also build your knowledge in whatever niche market and industry you’re in.

Do You Have Time NOT To Use Social Media?

These sites offer a quick and easy way to spread word, get traffic, make friends, and rub elbows with gurus and potential customers. There are tools that make them quick and easy to use (such as toolbars for your browser or applications for your smart phone) and aggregator services that can turn a few quick keystrokes into serious viral marketing.

You don’t have to spend hours a day to make a splash on the popular social media sites. A little effort could go a long way.