Top Social Media Sites

Social media sites are all the rage. People are finding new ways, each day, to keep track of long lost friends and build new business contacts, through these social media sites. Understanding which ones can get you the most exposure can be key to your SEO strategy. While the world of social media sites can seem overwhelming, if you attack it in an organized and consistent way you can gain some amazing exposure for your company and your products. Social media sites are a fast way to reach many potential customers. Just make sure that your information is short and to the point, because many social media experts do not have the time to indulge in long drawn out content.

One of the most talked about social media sites is Twitter. Once it hit the mainstream it really took off and took a lot of people with it. Twitter gives its users the ability to reach thousands of people with one, short, 140-character message. To gain tons of followers you will need to convince them that the information you have to share is current and important, but once you have convinced them, you will take your company to the next level. Twitter can be a really amazing marketing tool, if you treat it properly. If you misuse your Twitter powers you can feel the repercussions almost immediately.

Another popular social media site is Facebook. There are a ton of applications and fun ways to keep in contact with friends and colleagues on Facebook, just remember, if you are using this to promote your business, it is important to stay professional. Many people tend to get very personal and wind up sharing too much information on these social media sites. While they can be a great tool to keep in contact with friends, if you are trying to come across as an expert in your field, you may want to refrain from posting pictures of the last girl’s night out you enjoyed.

YouTube is another great social media site. YouTube allows you to post videos about you and your business for people to view. This is a great way to connect to potential customers. If you create videos that truly help people answer questions about your company, field and products, they will go to you first to make a purchase. While video can seem like a daunting task to jump right into, it may not be as difficult as you think. There are a number of sites that can help you create quality videos for free or very little investment or you can find companies that can create videos for you. Video is becoming more and more popular and even if you are unsure, you should start learning more about this great marketing tool.

Social media sites give companies an amazing opportunity to reach thousands of potential customers. They are also great tools for building a strong network of business resources. While social media sites can be used for personal and professional purposes, it is important to understand that you should try and keep things separated in order to portray yourself as an expert in your field.

Keeping Your Social Media Strategy Professional

For those of us that have Twitter and Facebook accounts it can be a difficult task to determine how to keep things professional if your main focus is to build a strong business network. Even if you start with the intention of keeping things professional, all it takes is one tweet or one photo to transform a professional site into something that some may find a bit unprofessional. We love social media sites because things are so instantaneous, but we forget that a single tweet can generate a rush of replies in mere seconds. So, policing your own accounts can become a full-time job. It is very important to make the purpose of your account clear from the first moment it is activated.

One of the things that can cause an issue on Facebook is the fact that people can tag you in on pictures they post without your approval. Therefore, your profile can be open to risk of unprofessional exposure. It is very important to monitor your Facebook on a daily basis for photos that may not align you as a business professional. All it can take to turn a potential business contact away is an unprofessional photo that you may not even be aware of.

Facebook has a number of privacy settings that can help you keep things separated. For example you can create a number of different friend lists so that you can have one group for friends, one for family and one for business contacts. This allows you to set up privacy settings for each group. For example, you may want to share photos of your family vacation with your friends and family contacts, but not your professional contacts. There are also settings on Facebook that allow you to remove yourself from public search results. This will help keep your personal information separate from your professional information. It also may be helpful to remove yourself from Google. This can also be done by going to your personal settings page.

There are also settings on Twitter that can help keep your postings private so that only people that you approve of can see them. It is important to understand that once you change this setting it will make any new postings private, but postings made before you changed the setting will still be public.

Doing a little research and taking the time to learn how to safeguard your personal information is a good idea on many levels. It will also help you to separate the information that you want to share with your family and friends from that which you want to share with your professional contacts. These things will help you to keep a professional rapport with your professional contacts while still sharing photos of your vacations with your family and friends. This will help you keep things professional with your professional contacts and they will not be distracted by personal information. Social media sites can be a great benefit to your business if you just take a few precautions.

Using Facebook to Grow Your Business

Started as a way for its founder Mark Zucherburg to connect with friends at Harvard, Facebook has exploded to over 200 million users and growing each day. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family and even reconnect with old friends from years past, but it also can be a great tool for your business. Facebook makes it easy to share information with tons of people, all at once, all you need to do is update your Facebook page and bam, everyone you know now knows the latest news about you, your family and your business.

Just remember, if you are going to be using your Facebook page for professional purposes it is important to keep things professional. While, the more contacts you have the more exposure you may get for your business, you want to make sure that the exposure you are getting is positive. If you just go and add every person you may have rubbed shoulders with to your account you may be risking your page to some unprofessional exposure. So, it is important to be selective when you are inviting people into your professional network.

That being said, social media marketing is a great way to share information about your business with tons of people in an instantaneous way. Say you want to promote a sale for your business or promote a new product you just added to your site. You can just make a quick posting on your Facebook “wall” and you have just updated all of your contacts with the latest and greatest news about your company. As you build contacts from people you know you are sure to create new connections in the process. Those new connections can then give you additional exposure which will allow you to build your network with people you may not have even known a day ago.

People are always looking for ways to make their business or job easier and more effective. By posting information that can be useful to the masses you are building credibility for yourself as a business owner and an expert in your field. By sharing business tips, along with information about your specific products, you can build a strong following that can quickly expand your network and build exposure for your company. Say you have a great tip about organizing your emails. You can post the tip on your Facebook status box. This will let everyone that has followed you see the tip and see that you are willing to share helpful information with them. This will build a sense of trust and confidence in you which will translate to a sense of trust in your business.

Facebook is a great tool to help promote your business and build your brand. Sharing helpful business tips can build trust with followers which will translate into a larger network than you can imagine. Just make sure and keep things professional if you are using your Facebook for business purposes, otherwise, your exposure could quickly switch from professional to unprofessional and that can be hard to change back.

Tips for Outsourcing Your Facebook

As the internet has developed it has opened the door for many companies to outsource some of their projects, like their Facebook, without spending tons of money in the process. Outsourcing is a great tool for smaller businesses that may not have huge budgets. Many smaller companies have small and large projects here and there which do not substantiate hiring a full-time employee. These are perfect examples of when it can be a smart decision to outsource some projects in order to get things accomplished within a limited budget.

Outsourcing can be an amazing tool for small business owners, because it gives you access to employees when the need arises and does not force you into hiring a full-time employee when you may not have a consistent amount of work for them. In many cases you can find people that are very knowledgeable on exactly what you need done, so there is no need to invest your time, effort and money in training an employee that you may have to let go in a few months.

A great task that can be very easy to outsource is building a company Facebook page. Facebook is a great resource for reaching people and creating buzz about your company. Once it is set up it does take some updating on a regular bases to help attract “fans” to your page and to keep the existing fans interested. This is why this is such a great task to outsource. You can pay someone 1-2 hours a week to keep your Facebook current instead of overwhelming an existing employee or trying to create enough work for a full-time employee that you would, most likely, have to pay much more.

Obviously, if you are going to outsource something like your Facebook account you will want to make sure that the person you choose is familiar with Facebook and has some knowledge or familiarity with your type of business. This will help you from having to micromanage the freelancer which can be counterproductive towards your efforts towards streamlining your business.

You may also want to portion out your tasks over time. This will give you an opportunity to see how they work before committing to them for a larger project that you may wait weeks for completion and then find out that they didn’t really meet your expectations. You can simply start with the task of setting up your Facebook. It is always a good idea to give clear details on what you would like done. The more specific you are when you outsource projects, the better your results will be. Once you have approved the Facebook page you can set up weekly tasks for the freelancer to complete. Setting up a weekly schedule will give you the opportunity to see their progression in a reasonable timeframe. This will give you ample opportunities to reevaluate their work and decide if they are meeting your needs.

Outsourcing for your Facebook can be a great way to get you moving on your social media projects. Just remember to use established freelancers that have similar projects already under their belt and give them small tasks to begin with until you are confident in their performance.