Inspiring Ideas On Using Social Networking To Promote Your Website

May 2, 2010

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone these days that isn’t a part of at least one social network. You should use this to your advantage. By joining, finding free ways to push your website development, you can get valuable incoming traffic.

With social networking, you can stay in touch with family and friends wherever they are. Sharing pictures, stories and sending messages are popular pastimes. This way of keeping in touch has extended into the business world and become useful as a marketing tool. Joining a social network is free so there’s no reason not to give it a try. These sites bridge the gap across the miles better than simple email.

Which sites can you use? The following sites have been found by business owners to be the most appropriate: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and MySpace. Each one is appropriate for different styles of business, so it is up to you to test and track to see which works in your situation. Once you sign up with a valid email address and password, you are ready to get started.

Use these sites to create a page telling everyone about your business. Search for family, friends and business contacts who have additional connections, so you can keep on top of what’s going on in their lives and businesses.

Let’s look at a site like Facebook. This is one of the most popular sites and can be beneficial for personal and business reasons. On the business side, you can post links to your website when new products are launched, new newsletters are published or sales are going on.

If you blog, post links to your newest blog posts (or to guest blog posts you’re doing elsewhere around the blogosphere). Draw attention to contests, invited guest bloggers or other events. Have an online radio show? You can invite friends to listen to live podcasts to learn more about your business.

On a site like YouTube, you can post videos and add the links to your Facebook profile, Twitter stream, etc. Invite all your friends to interact and leave you comments.

The beauty of these social sites is that business contacts and friends can distribute your links to other people who may be interested in what you do, as well. This is what they called viral marketing at its best.

As any professional virtual assistant will tell you, always remember when promoting your blog or website within social networking arenas that you must not do so blatantly. Take it easy and get to know the people you are interacting with. They say that social networking can be addictive. While it can be a double-edged sword if you’re not careful, setting boundaries will make it addictive in a good way by growing your business. If you’d really like to experience the incredible gains of social media, but you just don’t have the time, take on an expert virtual assistant to ‘get the ball rolling.’

Just like so many other online marketing tools, the name of the game is relationships. Work on building these ties with not only friends and families, but with target audience and business people on the best social networking sites MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, among others.

Try and comment on your friends’ posts and surf to their links. As an Internet marketing tool, social networking works both ways. Don’t think of it as a means to an end but one of the more fun marketing tools you get to use to grow your business. Above all else, remember that it is free!

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Posted by Virtual Miss Friday | Filed Under **Marketing**, **VMF**, **eBusiness**