Merely creating a presence over Facebook doesn’t help you much if people don’t pay you enough attention. Social media is all about creating the right buzz and then maintaining that buzz over a long period of time. There are two things working against you: people, especially on the Internet, have a very short attention span and there is too much noise over there. Once the deluge of information begins to hit you it is very difficult to differentiate between what you want and what you don’t want. So the only solution for you as an entrepreneur is to keep your friends and followers engaged in such a manner that they always have a reason to interact with you meaningfully.

Listed below are 10 steps you can take to create a killer Facebook presence.

1. Fine conversations to participate in

Since social media is all about user generated content and conversations in order to draw attention to your presence you need to find qualified conversations and participate in them meaningfully. Remember that every interaction that you have is like a building block so you have to be very careful how you interact. Make sure you always add value to the ongoing discussion. Finally conversations and participating in them will also help you set a tone.

 

2. Create an interactive and vibrant Facebook fan page

The great thing about creating Facebook fan Pages is that you can make them as interactive as possible. You can organise events and contests as a business organization and declare winners (and also give them a prize). It is a great starting point when people arrive at your presence on Facebook.

 

3. Organize surveys and quizzes

People love to answer questions and prove to the world how much they know. You can use this tendency to your advantage by conducting surveys and quizzes regularly through your Facebook fan page. There are many free and commercial applications available that allow you to do that.

 

4. Post useful information

You can curate content from various sources that people can use. Since there is so much junk on the Internet it is often very difficult to dig out useful information and if your Facebook profile (or your Facebook fan page) can become a useful resource it will help you strengthen your presence as well as your brand.

 

5. Offer your own tips and wisdom

Offering tips about your product or service can generate lots of positive buzz around your presence. Suppose you are promoting a new operating system for mobile devices and people may have some difficulties once they start using it. You can post useful tips and tricks through Facebook so that by the time the start using your operating system they already know how to move around and perform tasks that they want to perform. They won’t be averse to using your operating system.

Similarly if you are promoting some affiliate program you can provide insightful updates on its merits and things people should be cautious of.

 

6. Directly interact through your Facebook fan page

The updated Facebook fan pages allow you to interact through your page rather than your profile and this can further help you strengthen your presence as a business. You can easily switch between your personal profile and your Facebook fan page in order to interact with your friends and followers.

 

7. Upload images and videos about your business

Images and videos can see a lot more than your words and make an immediate impact. Did you recently have an office party? Are you hiring new employees? Did you just move into a new office or adopted an official pet? Whatever big or small reason you have use it to post amusing and informative images and videos to strike a chord with your Facebook friends and followers.

 

8. Hold regular conversations with your friends and followers

Regularly talk to the people who come to your Facebook fan page and leave messages over there. Whether those messages are negative or positive respond to them. You don’t have to respond to every single message if you’re getting hundreds of messages  everyday (it won’t be humanly possible unless you have a very big team just to manage your Facebook presence) but the ones that actually need to be replied to must never go unanswered. You can also encourage people to vote conversations on various topics, preferably related to your product or service (preferably, without making it obvious).

 

9. Encourage your friends and followers to share their own stories, videos and images

Everybody is looking for a platform and if you can provide a vibrant platform to your friends and followers nothing like it. Invite them to post their updates, interesting anecdotes, videos and images using your Facebook fan page so that they can enjoy greater exposure. It will also encourage them to visit your profile or fan page on a regular basis and interact with other people over there.

 

10. Keep yourself as focused as possible

On social networking websites like Facebook often it is not easy not to talk of everything under the sun but this would dilute your presence. If you are promoting an affiliate program then most of your updates must be centered around that affiliate program. You will have to be creative and keep people engaged even while talking about affiliate marketing.

Although the list can go on and on these are the basic, fundamental steps you can take to create a killer Facebook presence that can reap numerous benefits for you and your business.

 

Twitter can be a great marketing tool for an online publisher like you if you practice patience and strategy. It is a social marketing platform with infinite potential once you have created a presence for yourself. Yes, like any other social gathering or segment, you need a presence, and you build this presence one follower at a time and one update at a time.

So how do you create this presence? As an online publisher you already have an advantage that other Twitter users might not have: you are a communicator. You are constantly publishing your thoughts and ideas and sharing them with your readers and you have to do the same thing on Twitter, only this time you have to use 140 characters (although some applications like Tweedeck are gradually allowing you to use more characters but it is not advised as it completely defeats the purpose of micro-blogging). So the way to leveraging Twitter as a publisher is actually creating a formidable presence that is hard to ignore. This is how you achieve that:

1. Create a strategy

Interacting on Twitter is not a sequence of random postings if you actually want to create an effective presence as an online publisher. You need a strategy in place that lets you control what you post and whom you target. This may also involve selecting time for your postings, replies, mentions and retweets. You carefully choose people with whom you want to interact with.

2. Be recognizable

Branding is very important on Twitter. The noise is unprecedented and unless you are easily recognizable people are not going to listen to you. It is not that they don’t want to listen to you; it is just that at a particular time they might be following hundreds of Twitter users and having very busy timelines. The best way to get noticed is to have a recognizable Twitter avatar. You can use your own photograph or something that is highly unique. Just make sure that whatever image you use it is related to your brand, business our online identity.

3. Create a customized profile page

Almost everybody checks out your profile page before following you and people are not simply going to follow you by the strength of your 3-5 most recent updates. They might like to visit your website (so mention that) or your blog. You can also briefly talk about your business, what you do, what you’re about, and what you like to share on Twitter. It is mostly your profile page that prompts people to follow you.

4. Post interesting, useful information

Although people would be interested in hearing about you keep that to one or two postings. Share interesting links from the Internet with them. Provide them some highly useful information. Make your Twitter content as unique as possible. Once they know that they can expect highly relevant information from you they begin to pay attention to almost everything you post and this may also include postings regarding your own blog or website.

5. Participate in conversations

Social media and social networking is all about engaging people in meaningful conversations. This may not happen in the beginning and it may take some time. While you are building a credible presence for yourself, keep looking for people already participating in ongoing conversations and pitch in whenever and wherever you think you can contribute. Just make sure that your postings are constructive and not obstructive or distracting. You can find interesting conversations by paying close attention to people you are following, or by simply using Twitter search for your relevant keywords.

Participating in conversations also means directly talking to individuals. It might not be possible to do this once you have more than a couple of thousand followers, but randomly you can choose people and talk to them directly.

6. Talk about your own content

As an online publisher you obviously want to attract more and more people to your own content and you can achieve this by constructively and engagingly talking about it. You can pick up interesting lines out of your recent articles and blog posts and publish them on Twitter and generate curiosity about them. You can also ask your followers what they think of your opinion or whatever you have to say on your website or blog.

7. Post links to your older content

You may want to do this contextually. For instance, there is a conversation going on on a particular topic and you have already written something on this that you feel can add value to the discussion. You can easily mention that link and direct people to your blog or website. Once people are comfortable with your presence you can also randomly post older links and they won’t mind.

8. Pay attention to what you’re posting and try to be as meticulous is as possible

Just because you are posting on Twitter it doesn’t mean you have to compromise the quality of your updates. As an online publisher you have a reputation to sustain and this means being mindful of what sort of language you use and what is the quality of your interactions. Maintain decorum, spell-check as often as possible and be careful of your grammar. Using decent language means that you respect your readers and care for what they think of you. It also makes them believe that you take extra effort while posting your updates.

9. Remain consistent

Consistency is very important on Twitter as people are soon forgotten and they are rarely missed. People on Twitter are not selfish or uncaring; there is simply too much going on at a time. Remain visible and stay in front of people on a daily basis if you want them to remember you and notice you. Also be careful of your timing. You don’t have to be there 24 x 7, just select a timeframe and then stick to that. It may take a while before you can figure out at what time your updates generate the most response but once you have figured it out, stick to that timeframe, even it is just for 30 odd minutes.

10. Remain focused

Consistency should be coupled with focus in order to create an attentive audience for your updates. It doesn’t mean that you cannot post anything else but at least 70% of your posts must be related to your core subject because that is why people are following you. Instead of noise you need to remain a voice. You are an expert in your field so you should try your best to stick to it. For instance, if you are an online marketer and you want to target people who are interested in online marketing then it is advisable that most of your updates are on online marketing. It doesn’t mean you cannot share your thoughts on latest political trends (for instance, the recent unrest in the Middle East, or the WikiLeaks controversy) or even film gossip, but keep that occasional.

So these are a few things you can do to create an effective presence on Twitter as an online publisher and leverage its potential. Of course there are 100s of other things that you can do but these are basically the fundamental actions that you can take persistently in order to market yourself on Twitter.

The great advantage of social media marketing is that you can directly interact with your friends and followers without seeming too pushy as an affiliate marketer.  An underlying problem with affiliate marketing is that you’re always promoting somebody else’s business and you make money by selling someone else’s products and services.

If you already have a strong personal brand over the Internet this is not a problem.  There are some highly-rated bloggers, writers and consultants who promote various affiliate products and services through their blogs, websites and social media profiles without endangering their credibility.  But it takes time to develop and strengthen your brand over the Internet.

Is it too hard to promote your affiliate programs, products and services using social media marketing?  It is not. You need to exercise patience, developed great interpersonal skills, and communicate with your friends and followers on a daily basis.  Social media marketing primarily constitutes of

[Read more...]

Social media allows you to directly interact with your customers and clients and if you are an affiliate marketer this can work to your great advantage.  The problem with affiliate marketing is that it depends on lots of traffic, continuous networking, and never-ending confidence building. In affiliate marketing another problem is you are promoting somebody else’s business and this is something that can really turn people off.

Social media and social networking actually allow you to mingle with your target market and carry out trust building campaigns.  You can interact with them on a day-to-day basis and you can be a part of the crowd instead of seeming like a shady online entrepreneur always tricking people into clicking affiliate links and buying useless products. [Read more...]