Social Networking: The Five Biggest Mistakes Nichepreneurs™ Make

Strategic use of social networking can help a company grow but beware of five common mistakes and learn how to avoid them…

Over half of all Americans between the ages of 15-34 consider themselves active social network users. They regularly visit well-known social networking sites,Guest Posting such as MySpace or Facebook, or log onto specialty social networks, like Ravelry (devoted to the fiber arts) or GroupRecipes (for the foodie set). While industry research tells us that television watching is declining, especially among this age group, social network use is on the rise: average users spend seven to eight hours a week online.

This time spent on social networks clearly affects buying decisions. An estimated forty percent of all social networkers say they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products they like, according to GreenBiz.com, with twenty-eight percent saying they’ve had a brand or product recommended to them by a friend.

The message is clear. Strategic use of social networking can help a company grow. It’s an effective use of target marketing, reaching out to one’s customers where they are.

However, in order to capitalize on social networking’s power, you have to do it right. Execution is everything. Make no mistake. Every time you log onto Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking platform, you’re representing your company in a very visible arena. The world is, quite literally, watching.

There are five common mistakes Nichepreneurs™ make when it comes to social networking. Here’s what they are — and more importantly, how to avoid them!

Mistake #1: Dismissing Social Networking as “Just a Fad”

Social networking may have emerged as a phenomenon only recently, but it is a manifestation of something as old as time — word of mouth! Customers value the opinions of colleagues, relatives, peers and friends above almost anything else. This has been true for generations. Social networking has merely expanded the definition of friend. Technology has made it easier to communicate with more people than ever before — a person could have hundreds of friends they’ve never once met in person. That’s a power and a privilege that no one is going to let just fade away.

Mistake #2: Mistaking Social Networking for Advertising

Social networking is a form of relationship marketing. It works best when you view it as an opportunity to build your brand, a prime platform to let your customer base know who you are and what you represent.

At the same time, you’ve got a fantastic chance to learn about your customers. If you actually stop and read what they post, you’ll learn a tremendous amount about who your customers are and what’s important to them. Where else do you get your customer’s pure, unvarnished opinions served up to you on a silver platter?

Don’t spoil this prime market research opportunity with unwelcome advertising. It’s fine to let people know you’re in business, but that can’t be the only thing you bring to the conversation.

Mistake #3: Failing to Connect Online Interaction with Real World Consequences

This mistake is often a generational problem. Nichepreneurs who grew up before the Internet was such an omnipresent force can have a hard time understanding how words on a computer screen can have real consequences on the every day course of business.

Compounding the problem is the fun, freewheeling atmosphere prevalent on many social networking platforms. It’s easy to forget the potential results when the commentary’s flying fast and furious. However, your words can come back and haunt you later. Remember — it all counts! The days where an organization can dismiss poor behavior with “It’s just the internet” are long gone!

Mistake #4: Using Sock Puppets

Sock puppets is the term applied to social networking accounts that are created with the intent of hiding the poster’s true identity. Individuals often create sock puppets in an effort to avoid the real life consequences discussed in mistake number three!

Sock puppets can be used to boost, support, or defend a company’s position. Conversely, they can be used to tear down, disparage, or make negative commentary about a competitor’s organization, products, or services.

Either way, it is a bad idea! Many denizens of social networks are incredibly tech-savvy, and it won’t take them long at all to discover who is really behind a string of negative or hostile commentary. Exposure can be a public relations nightmare.

Honesty is the best policy. Either be willing to own your commentary, by posting under your own identity, or don’t say them at all!

Mistake #5: Overestimating Social Networking’s Role

Social networking is powerful. It is influential. It is, in many cases, free to participate in. However, it is NOT the end all, be all solution to your marketing needs. While it is tempting to try to solve many of your marketing challenges with social networking, it is important to remember that social networking is a tool, not the only tool.

Use social networking efforts to augment your existing marketing efforts. There are small, start up companies that market themselves solely via social networking. However, this is a self-limiting strategy: even if you reach every single person on that network, you’re still missing out on a large number of potential customers who never log on.

Keep your perspective. Social networking might not eat into your budget, but it does take time. Realize that at best, social networking can significantly augment and enhance your marketing and promotional efforts — but it will never wholly replace it!

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How To Ensure Success On Social Media

Your main reason of social networking was to supply individuals with a method to communicate with from anywhere on the planet. Social websites wasn’t originally produced to present enterprises a further edge. When most business people use social networking, they concentrate on the company’s profit. They give attention to marketing their unique content and products or services with no intentions to interact with their consumers.

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Interacting with all your viewers will permit you to create stronger interactions with your audience. Interacting can make individuals truly feel respected and convince them to feel as they’re an integral part of your social networking platform. You desire your viewers to feel as when they belong as part of your community for the reason that this feeling leads to sturdy associations, returning site consumers, sales and word of mouth promotion.

After you interact, your viewers feel as if they belong, it’s essential to do so for the proper explanation. Don’t interact with another person just for constructing a sale. Only communicate with your consumers if that is what you wish to perform. There should be no secondary reason for social networking conversation.

Provide Value Instead Of Talking About Yourself
Several social media marketing professionals make it a degree to continually to talk about their own products or services. Some people explain to their users about their food even though other people speak about more meaningful matters in your life for example personal relationship statuses and holidays. Mentioning those types of particulars in a while will help your consumers to know more about you, but when these facts are frequent in your social sites, users will stop following you because your posts will become uninteresting for them.

You could possibly ponder why celebs that post images of on their own eating food, going on holidays, or relationships get much more focus than the one who regularly posts or tweets about the food he/she had every day. The key reason why celebs get better exposure if they posts such things is because they have already got a great deal of popularity, and the content on these celebs’ feeds is regarding their professional fields. Singers/Actors mostly write things on their social networks connected with their work. They don’t submit shots of their food or holidays just as much. That is definitely why when such clicks are more appreciated than the photographs from somebody who posts only those types of clicks.

Talk less about yourself and try to provide more value. Do this by writing quality content and advertise it. A lot of bloggers use social networking to promote their own website posts. They make this happen because they have confidence in its value and need to empower the users with that worth. Users who truly feel empowered will become your loyal consumers.

Produce More Content
Lots of social networking users publish at least one completely fresh post on a social website on a daily basis. However, that’s not adequate to acquire attention. Social networking is a busy area with many posts being despatched every minute. Millions of marketing posts are produced and released each day. It is difficult to stand out in such a huge competition.

Rather than putting up 1 tweet on Twitter, publish 10 tweets every day. Instead of making a single YouTube video in a month, do it every week. Constantly glance for methods to boost the rate at which you could force out fresh content. By raising the rate at which you thrust out posts, you’ll be noticed by a huge number of people.

As you can receive more views, a lot of people within your social network may subscribe to your blog and purchase your items. When creating content you should never compromise with its value and quality. Remember, you should create a high quality video for YouTube each month instead of creating 4 bad videos in a month.

Social Networking Achievement Is Not Complete Success
Many individuals think that having a selected variety of followers ensures achievements and cash. Nevertheless, success with social networking is different from achievement depending on a profit producing stance. Social networking is a resource used to create more profits, but it isn’t something which can boost a business and assume that it will convert into high sales.

Social media platforms can be a destination to get more oblique gross sales. Use social websites to advertise landing pages and blogs. This will bring about a lot more readers and subscribers. Obtaining extra readers and subscribers and will bring on extra revenue for your business. Social media will intensify the strength of these indirect techniques of earning more revenue.

Target Every Social Media Platform One By One
Lots of individuals have a solid wish to become expert in various social networking sites. This is vital to become a complete expert in various social networks and acquiring a total domination of social media. It is this exact same motivation that will cause destruction of your complete social networking strategy.

Read these final two sentences properly. Something which is so crucial for success of social networking can also prove to be a huge downfall that lots of people may confront. Try to focus on a single social media website at any given time similar to learning one particular new language at any given time. Every time you become an expert in one social media website, it becomes easier to master the other social networking sites.

You have to master one social community in a time as an alternative to endeavouring to grasp them at the same time. While learning any new language, does the learner only concentrate on learning French or consider mastering French, Italian, Arabic, German, Portuguese, and Spanish at the same time? Similarly, try to focus on a single social media platform at a time, for example Facebook. Don’t try to master Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube at the same time.

Conclusion
At times, the most beneficial info and facts we want is the knowledge that was formerly overlooked. People don’t function at 10 distinctive jobs at a given time, but now men and women are ready to find out and concentrate on numerous social media websites at the same time prior becoming expert on them. Social media marketing results has bewildered the real sense of monetary results. You may know now to thrust out more and more fresh/unique articles, but should generate more of it. You need to present value in lieu of publishing almost everything you can visualise mainly because men and women love to follow blogs or WebPages that provide something worth. Conversation with your family or friends is essential, but so is a proper conversation with all your social media viewers.

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