Social Marketing Traffic – Part Two

Here are a few methods of standing out from the crowd and tackling the social communities in a way that influences people to take action, and creates a positive brand and online identity for your business.

Helping Hand

People want to be treated fairly, as individuals, not just a ‘target consumer base’. Remember this when entering into social communities and rather than focus on spreading your message across, remember, you need to make it about ‘them’, not about you.

Don’t be afraid to share free content and resources. You aren’t losing money by giving people a reason to follow you, to pay attention, to look at you as someone who has their best interests in mind, in fact, the more you give away the more you will stand out from the crowd of marketers who aren’t interested in giving anything away (and you’ll find many of these types).

No Wall Flowers Allowed

It’s common for new marketers to join social communities and instantly replicate what everyone else is doing. Worse, they stay close up against the wall, and whisper out the occasional “me, too”. Don’t do this. You need to decide what you want to be known for, what brand you want to create and work towards establishing a reputation in your niche market from day one.

That doesn’t mean you have to be the most active, or the loudest marketer in the “room”, but it does mean that if you want to be noticed, you need to step out and not be afraid to communicate with your market, peers, and even competition.

Stay Active

This is difficult for even the most seasoned social marketers at times. Staying active.

We all seem to come in bursts, actively posting and updating for days on end, only to get busy with other projects and neglect to update our blogs, walls, profile pages or social portfolios for days (or weeks) on end.

Do your best to focus on consistency, even if in the beginning, your activity is minimal.

It’s best to get into a habit or a specific schedule so that people continue to see you up front and center. The last thing you want to do is minimize your marketing outreach that you spent weeks creating, simply because you seemed to have disappeared, out of the blue.

Connect

Remember that you are there to communicate and connect with your customer base. You want to do your best to always be sincere, genuine and honest. People will notice this, believe me.

If your content is solid, your products of high quality, people will remember that, and return to your site again and again.

Minimize costly mistakes (to both your bottom line and your reputation) by thoroughly researching your market, finding out what they want and giving it to them.

Once you build up credibility, you will find it easier to influence your market with a single post, and to expand your outreach even further.

Take some time to fill out your social profiles, update with images, personal photos, your current activity.

While you are a marketer first, friend second, you want to form a personal connection with your target audience.

Here are some of the best social communities to get involved with:

>> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
>> Friend Feed: http://www.FriendFeed.com
>> Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com
>> Stumble Upon: http://www.StumbleUpon.com
>> Delicious: http://www.Del.icio.us
>> My Space: http://www.MySpace.com