In this article we will discuss how social networking sites can help your small business and why it is a good idea to get your business involved in these popular sites.
First we need to establish what a social networking site is. If you have not heard of at least one of these sites I would be very surprised. Social sites have leapt into everyday life for many people throughout the world, keeping them connected with their friends, relatives and more. These sites include Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, Hubpages and LinkedIn. The main idea of these sites is that you have your own profile, letting anyone who is interested find out more about you. There are many more of these sites and taking advantage of this free web space is always a good idea. You will find that even with a quick five minutes to create an account may lead to a good few people checking in on your website and hopefully being converted to paying customers.
Let's get started! This basic guide will get you on these sites but with a little more time you can create a great set of 'mini websites' to drive new potential customers to you business.
1) Facebook is one of the best of the social web. First you will want to create an account for yourself or your business. Personally would create one in your real name as Facebook likes to crack down on free advertising due to a rise in spam accounts. Once you have created your personal account you will likely already have a few of your friends automatically added from your email contacts and you can if you wish search for more of your old friends and work colleagues.
Once you have done this you should make sure you fill in all of the profile information making sure to mention your company, what you do and include links to your website.
The next step is to create a group page. You should be able to find the small icon for this on the left hand side of your new profile page. These pages are mini websites which people can join to show their support. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of these pages already due to how simple it is to create them.
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First name your new group with your company name and a slogan. Getting a good descriptive name will help people find you and help. Next Facebook will walk you through the steps in creating your group. Have some fun and add images and the description of your company and your products and services. Try to not make this a sales page as something considered too much like a sale page could get removed from Facebook, try instead to just describe your company and encourage readers to check out your website. Once you're happy invite all of your friends. Once people join you can send them all PM's with your new services and post updates on your main profile to ensure your get some more leads.
2) Twitter is one of the newest and most useful and popular social networking sites now gracing the World Wide Web. Its popularity is in part due to the huge amount of celebrities who use it to keep their fans up to date with what they are up to. Twitter is basically online text messaging. You can 'tweet' a short message which will be sent updated to all the twitter users who have chosen to follow you. It's quick to sign up and though can be slow at the start is a great way to keep your customers updated without spamming them. Sign up a twitter account with company name and you are ready to start tweeting. Yes, it's that simple! Now is where most people miss the true value of twitter. Creating a brand is important and twitter allows you to upload your own background to really personalise and brand your company to your new twitter feed. This can be difficult to do without programs such as Photoshop. However you can get a professional one created free of charge by Unicora a company that specialises in small businesses web design. This is totally free with no catch so make sure you have a look.
The next step once you are happy with your branded twitter profile is to get some followers and the best way is to follow others, most people will follow you back as an unspoken rule. The other way is to place a link to your Twitter page on your website and on your Facebook account.
3) Squidoo is another social website however its focus is not on its profiles but on articles its users submit. After creating an article about your service, website, company or industry, (with links back to your website), you can post these articles online for people to read and benefit from. The more helpful the article the more people will view it and check out your other articles. These articles called Squidoo lenses also get added to google's search so your article and the link to your site will also get found by people searching google.
4) Hubpages is very similar to Squidoo and is another article site. Submit your articles to both these sites.
5) LinkedIn is the final social website that we will look at in this article and is a less well know site then the others mentioned previously. LinkedIn is a networking site aimed at businesses and professionals. It's a great place to find contacts that you may need and also advertise your company to thousands of business professionals. By adding just a few off your own contacts puts you in contacts with thousands of other LinkedIn members. Its works in levels, people in your network are the first level, then the second level is all the other contacts that your first contacts have and then it goes to the third level. It's a type of a friend of a friend network with every member being a motivated professional. It is the dark horse of the networking world with many more users then you might think.
There are many social sites for you to explore and use, hopefully this short article has sparked your interest in the social web and you will gain allot of new business. This article was created by Unicora.com the specialist web designers for the small UK business.
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