5 Steps for Social Media Marketing Success in Your Business No Matter What Business You are in.

Social Media Marketing

While there are many people who have not figured out how to make social media work for their business, there are others that are absolutely “KILLING IT” with social media.

While I have had some success in social media and have a large following, I was missing a few pieces of the puzzle.  That was all cleared up one night on an exclusive webinar I was on with Tim Erway and Katie Freiling.

Tim Erway is a world renowned copywriter and Internet marketing genius who is Mike Dillards partner with Magnetic Sponsoring as well as a coach and trainer (A total legend in the industry).

Katie Freiling is a total Social Media Rock star.  Over the past few years, she has perfected a system, using social media that pulls her in between 50-a few hundred leads a day for FREE.  Here’s the kicker. Today, she only spends about 20-30 minutes on social media sites; she has created a following of tens of thousands of people and makes money at will.

Don’t get me wrong. Katie is way more passionate about sharing her knowledge and skills than she is about making a dollar bill.

Anyway, here is a five step process that you can put in place to increase your web presence as well as your sales in whatever business you’re involved in.

Step 1 – Choose Your Brand and Get a WordPress Blog

Choosing a brand for yourself may take a little bit of thought.  You want to identify yourself with something you’re really good at that other people can benefit from your knowledge.  If you’re a sports fanatic, perhaps your brand can encompass that aspect.  If you’re a social media expert, you can brand yourself in that sector.

If you’re not sure how you want to brand yourself, don’t let that hold you back from moving forward with the rest of the steps here.  Keep going and you will discover that you have gifts and talents to share with the world around you and you can definitely build a brand around that.

Why a WordPress blog?  Because they are far superior to all other blogging platforms.  I am sure there are some people out there that may disagree with me, however, take a look around at what all the 6, 7 and 8 figure earners on the Internet are using.  Yep, WordPress Baby!

Static websites are good for sending direct response traffic to.  You DON’T want to send your social media traffic to a Landing page or Squeeze Page.  You want to send them to your blog.  A blog is your hub.  It’s where people can come and get to know you at a deeper level.  It’s where relationships and conversations can take place.

You can also generate leads off of your blog by having an opt-in form and giving away a gift in exchange for their contact information.  Be careful here.  Don’t give away some cheesy E-book.  You want to give away something that is going to blow their minds with the value you’re providing in the gift.  Don’t Cheese Out! Always give away more than you expect to receive in return.

Step 2- Sign Up With the Top 4 Social Media Sites/Get Targeted Followers/Update Sights Daily

Ok, this is like three steps in one but what the hell.  I am trying to cram a whole lot into this post here.  There are literally hundreds of social media sites out there.  The most traffic goes to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.  These are the ones I am active on and a great starting point.

If your one of those people that are afraid of Facebook or any other SM sites, I have a tip for you. GET OVER IT!  Don’t worry about your old boyfriend/girlfriend stalking you.  Unless you add them to your network, they are still history and can see little about you.

Facebook has over a ½ billion users and YouTube is far more than that.  Guess what?  It doesn’t matter what business you’re in; your target market is right there. Yep, guaranteed.

Once you have registered on these sites and created your profile (make it professional). I hired some graphic design experts to create backgrounds for my twitter profile and for my Facebook picture. Both cost me less than $100.  If you want to be taken seriously online, don’t skimp on your image.  It’s all a part of your branding and positioning.

Now that you have gotten your sites all set up, now you want to start working on getting targeted followers.  This means, you want to add people with like mindsets into your networks.  Don’t just start adding any old Joe Schmoe or Jane Slane.  Make sure that the people you add are in the same area of interests as you are.

I almost have to laugh at people who brag about how they have 50,000 twitter followers and 5000 Facebook friends.  While some people have very targeted followings, others are very non-targeted and totally outside their niche’s, therefore they will never have a bond with their social media lists.

On Twitter, you can Google Guru’s in your niche and then follow their followers and start a dialogue with them. On Facebook, you can join groups relevant to your industry and start adding the people in those groups, same with LinkedIn.  On YouTube, you’re going to have to search for people in your niche.

Lastly, make sure that you update all of your social networks on a daily basis with fresh content.  I use www.Ping.fm as a tool to update my social network statuses and you can literally update as many as you subscribe to with the click of one button.  Gotta love tools!

Step 3 – Market Your Posts

When getting busy in the social media realm, you want your content to go viral, meaning you want your friends and followers to share your content with their friends and followers and so on, so forth.  Provide extremely high value and this won’t be an issue.

If you write a blog post, send it to your list and ask your blog viewers to share it as well.  Socialize your post on every social network you belong to.

What will happen over the course of time is your post will end up on other people’s sites as links back to your site. This will give your blog credibility with the search engines and cause your posts to rank high in the search engines provided you did some good keyword research and have tagged your posts accordingly.

Step 4 – Nurture your relationship with your list of subscribers

Ever hear the saying, “The money is in the list?” Well that’s not true.  The money is in the relationship you have with your list.  You don’t want to keep blasting your list with affiliate offers and constantly try to be selling something.

Remember, value comes first.  Forget about your product or service.  Focus on solving people’s problems.  To do that, you need to know what some of the challenges your niche has and provide the solutions via killer content.  You can make video’s blog posts or press releases, doesn’t matter.  Just remember this formula:

C.A.B

Cut Them Open

Add Alcohol

Apply Band-Aid

Or

P.A.S

Problem

Agitation

Solution

If you create your content around this formula, you are going to have raving fans for life.  You will be the go to person and people will be chasing you down to know what you know, get in your business and buy your stuff.

Your list is a true asset so treat it as such.  Those people came to you for a solution, now find out what the problems are and provide it over the course of time.

Step 5 – Grow Your Income Streams

In any business, multiple income streams are better than one.  Don’t just randomly be creating content and have no solution products or services to offer.

This is why I like funded proposal systems.  They have the affiliate products embedded within the system and while people, who opt in, may not buy your primary product, there are other products that they may instantly click with and buy from you.  I currently have about 15 different income streams which help offset my marketing expenses and it’s pretty exciting to go to the mailbox a few days a week and see checks in there from different affiliate programs.

This was a rough order of magnitude overview of how to handle your social media marketing.  Sure there are more pieces to the puzzle and of course it’s going to require some more training on your part.  This should get you off to the races.

To Your Success,

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3 Responses to “5 Steps for Social Media Marketing Success in Your Business No Matter What Business You are in.”

1. Anonymous says:

   August 27, 2010 at 4:45 pm

   Twitter Trackbacks…

   …
2. Thomas C. Chandler says:

   August 30, 2010 at 8:39 am

   Hey Josh –

   Excellent break down on the main ingredients to Social Networking. Keep up the great work my friend.

   Your Pal -
   Thomas
3. Andy Pitt says:

   September 8, 2010 at 7:19 am

   Great advice as always – Josh

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