Social Marketing is a low cost and effective way to market your organization, business or yourself. There are many different ways to use the internet and social marketing to promote your business and organization. The following is one way.
Start with a simple blog, which is short for web log. It is a simple web site. You try to make your blog interesting to your intended reader. You can just have entries originated by you, but it will probably be more interesting if you add content from other similar web sites. It takes a little time to figure how to do it, but essentially you are linking other similar web sites, blogs, twitter, facebook, linkedin and other sites to your blog. As they write new content it appears on your site. My examples below:
Simple One Page Blog:
More Complex Blogs:
First step for you? Create your Blog. For blogging I prefer blogger.com which is free and part of google, but there are numerous other free and low cost services. You can get up and blogging in a few minutes, although it will take some time to learn the tricks. Try it, you will like it.
Start slow and easy.You can write many blogs if you wish. You may wish to have one that is just your resume or brochure that does not change very often. My example is:
The address of the blog is a little long. You can purchase a .com address to make the address easier to remember, and have it automatically forward to your blog. This costs about $75 for ten years from GoDaddy or Google or other sources. My examples below:
After you have your blog up and running you will want to join other social networks which will compliment your blog. There are many different social networks. These are the ones I use.
http://www.facebook.com
Use the same or very similar name for all the systems. If you are marketing a company or yourself, use the name of the company or your name.
After you have your blog working, write a short blast on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, directing people to the blog. Update all of them each time you write a new blog entry.
You will want to reach out and find others in your group and link with them. You want to let them know what you are doing without becoming obnoxious about it.
Use the blog as the main focus - Put information on the blog that your target audience will find interesting. I use the other services to point people to the blog.
My Examples - And I am older then dirt.
If I can do it - you can.
http://www.facebook.com/craighullinger
Pictures are worth a 1,000 words. A photo of yourself can be used. If you look like me, a distant fuzzy shot is best. I am a city planner, hence the map.
You can also use direct email to your contacts. I usually just send a link to my blog to my contacts so if they are interested they can go to the blog, or if not, just delete the email. You should send the email to an undisclosed@list.com with the actual addresses to a bcc address - that way spammers won't pick up the addresses and harass your email contacts.
It is your choice whether you use a simple email format or one with an attractive photo or letterhead - the attractive letter head looks nice but takes longer to open and will not work on everyone's computer.
Social marketing is evolving rapidly, but you can get underway quickly with no cost and a little effort. It takes a reasonably computer savvy person a couple of hours to get all this up and running, and then some time to develop a little skill.
The buttons at the bottom of the entry make it easy for people to send your blog address to their friends on Facebook, Buz, or Twitter.
The buttons at the bottom of the entry make it easy for people to send your blog address to their friends on Facebook, Buz, or Twitter.
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