During a recent review on online business services at econsultancy.com, it was revealed that blog reading and social network activities represent the fourth most popular activity online, even more interesting than e-mail. 10% of the time that we spend when interacting on the web is spent within social media sites. As a measure of the importance of social media sites, search engine giant Bing revealed that second in its list of the top 10 world trends for the year was Twitter. If this doesn’t show you how important social media is in our collective lives, what will? Just as it is important for you to “be” on Facebook, you must maintain a proactive presence on Twitter as well.
Twitter has been widely referred to as a micro-blog and has really found its own niche. As you know, this medium allows you to send short status messages, and it has really caught on within the business world. Companies can keep in touch with clients, publicly handle customer relationship issues and generally reveal a level of visibility that is quite unique.
A Twitter presence for your online initiative should be more than just a straightforward account. Those who are serious about this medium create a targeted background design rather than the generic offering, set up their profiles and links correctly and really consider how to build followers. There are a number of tools available to you, many based on straightforward keyword research, enabling you to accurately target people who have said they are interested in your niche. Once again, as with Facebook, management and maintenance of your Twitter account will take a concerted effort. You should allocate time, ideally again on a daily basis, to create meaningful messages, a.k.a. tweets, and interact with others through direct messages. If you think this is quite a lot of work, just realise that a majority of corporate members do not meaningfully interact through these mediums, and you can set yourself apart. You should aim to be one of the educated few, who really take advantage of what this fantastic medium has to offer.
In the world of Internet marketing, the entire arena has changed quite significantly over the last couple of years. Web 2.0 heralded the arrival of the social media revolution and this changed the very mindset of marketers online. Great emphasis is now placed on establishing your operation and your name, so that you are viewed as expert and authoritative. It is never advisable to try and hard-sell on Facebook and Twitter or other social media channels, and you should be very careful! It is highly recommended that you maintain a blog in addition to your main sales site. You can certainly link them and you can even create a subdomain within your website development to actually host your blog, but you should maintain an element of separation.
You need to think about your very core operations. You need to educate prospects about your product or service, whatever it may be. You certainly have no problem in convincing yourself how much of a deal your products represent, but remember that people in the real world know nothing about them, as yet. It’s your job to brand your organisation as the expert in its field. Create and maintain a well-designed, professionally presented blog. Generally, website development platforms such as WordPress are invaluable here, or you could choose to set up a content management system to start off with.
Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a highly-qualified Executive Virtual Assistant Service which helps businesses and individuals accomplish every detail of their professional aspirations. Want to discover more about these insightful online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!
