Don’t Get Seduced by the Dark Side… Keep it Simple.

I’m referring to the dark side force of social media that keeps you up at night worrying about growing your business and leveraging the superpower of social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Are you listening, responding and engaging your target market?

What are people saying about your brand, your products and services?   Are you paying attention? Have you claimed your business listings on Yelp.com?  What about the other opinion and ratings websites?  Do you have filters set up using www.Hootsuite.com to monitor keyword topics from Twitter?  You can use social media websites to listen to the buzz in the market place as it relates to your industry, the competition, your prospects wants, needs & desires, and your products and services.

Social Media offers so many benefits, but it can be a huge waste of time without the right plan and actions steps.

Simple Social Media Strategies for Everyone Who Wants to Connect, Engage & Grow Their Business!

For those of you who may have missed the Social Media Influence webinar, you can now watch the live VIDEO replay of the event, download the presentation slides (.PDF), and even get an Audio MP3 version of the recording at:
www.ProfitRichResults.com/social-influence/replay

Many people submitted questions and with almost 1000 people registered it was virtually impossible to get to all of them. Look for those questions to be answered here on the blog. Subscribe to the RSS Feed to be notified of new posts.

This was a free and action-packed webinar on Social Media Influence and you’re encouraged to send the replay link to your other team members, associates and friends that are interested in growing their businesses and leveraging social media.

Didn’t ask your question yet?  Add a comment to this post and it will be answered shortly.

I recently posted a question on LinkedIn about social media hype… I asked, “There’s a great debate on social media being a lot of hype.  What do you think and why?”

Here’s the conversation… add your opinion too.

What are geolocation applications and why do they matter to your business?

Geolocation applications like FourSquare, Gowalla and the recently released Facebook places are the latest social media trend and the next big thing for businesses and advertisers to use to connect with prospects and customers.

So what exactly are geolocation applications? A whole category of apps that are based around phones that are smart enough to know your location. If you have a smartphone, you can use these geolocation applications to check in to places, let your friends know where you are, and see where you friends are. You might see the use in this if you’ve ever gone somewhere, only to discover later that your colleagues or friends were there too. Beyond simply knowing where your friends are, on Foursquare and Gowalla you can also see tips left by people who have visited that place before you, for example in a restaurant you might find a tip about what to order.

Social Media Statistics that you just can’t ignore… Watch this Video.

Compelling facts from the video. While it was no doubt Erik Qaulman had it created to promote his book Socialnomics, (no I’m not an affiliate) it opens your eyes up to the massive opportunities created by these new web 2.0 mediums.   Social media isn’t a fad.  It’s growing exponentially and you better get with the program or get left behind.

I remember way back in the CompuServe and AOL days when people thought that the Internet was a fad too.  They waited to get their website going. Same thing happened again with blogging.  Now it’s Social media that has so many business professionals confused on the best practices to use to grow their business.

Regardless of which Social Media, Social Networking or content sharing website you’re involved with, they all have user profiles, settings and options to configure that can help make it easier to connect with you online.

Make it a point this week to revisit your profiles on the social media sites you’re involved with to make sure you are taking advantage of their options and you have a keyword-rich compelling profile.  Start with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook profile and company pages,  LinkedIn personal and company profiles and remember that “keywords drive traffic”.

Social Media Marketing Profile Tips:

Be proactive and utilize social media marketing and social media networking to find or create your dream  job.

I‘m not that political, I’m just a business owner that loves to help my clients.  I pay in plenty in payroll, social security and unemployment taxes.  I guess you would call me a conservative.

As an entrepreneur my entire life I don’t understand why big government wants to increase taxes on small businesses.  From my point of view, albeit limited, if government cut taxes for small businesses, they would hire more people or pay their current employees more which would mean that they would spend more and everyone would win.  Okay, back to using Social Media Marketing to help with your job search.

Social Media Marketing Linking Strategy

Are you using the social media sites correctly to send traffic to your website?

Are you linking to your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube or other social media accounts from your website?

With more than 400 million active users on Facebook, 30  million accounts on Twitter, 100 million U.S. viewers on YouTube, 50 million users on LinkedIn, and 200 million blogs, I’ll assume that you are actively participating on some level with at least a few social media sites.

Beyond using this medium to connect with new groups of people in unique ways, you should be making sure they want to learn more about you and what you have to offer so that they’ll either Google your name or just follow a link-back from the social media sites to your website.

Keywords Drive Traffic.

If you ever attended one of my Internet Marketing Seminars then you know that “Keywords Drive Traffic” is my online marketing mantra.  This short blog post is focused around the importance of using your keywords (and keyword phrases) for social media marketing.

This starts with understanding that keywords drive traffic, but with social media marketing it’s not the typical usage of driving traffic to get people to buy a product or service.

In fact, if that’s all you’re trying to do with social media networking than you are approaching social media with the wrong perspective and will waste a ton of time.

Social Media Marketing is all about relationships, adding value, joining the conversation and getting and giving feedback.

With Social Media the words you use in your profiles, account names, tags, blog titles & descriptions, user groups, and other posts all help you expand your digital footprint.

The top 5 Social Media sites that I recommend you focus your efforts are Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn and Your Blog. There are thousands of others and depending on your niche or focus area, there may be a few others that you want to leverage, but how many more in-boxes and accounts do you really need to manage?