Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Free Internet Marketing Using Social Media

When you are starting out in business, chances are that you have a limited advertising budget. You don’t want to blow it on advertising campaigns that don’t bring results. One of the simplest and also free ways of advertising is to join social networks and use other social media. There are many out there and each has its own benefits. My suggestion is to pick one, master it and then add another one. In this blog I will briefly describe the experience with each social network. Later, I will go into detail on each one.

Facebook

Facebook is an easy social network to use. It is easy to fill in information about yourself and your business. You can easily upload photos and videos. You can connect with customers for your business or prospects for an MLM opportunity by adding them as Friends. You can form your own group and invite friends to join. You can also start a fan page for your business. You can create lists of friends and send information out to 20 people at a time. With a group or fan page, you can send to everyone who subscribes. This can be in the thousands of people. You can also talk to friends in real time using the online chat feature.

MySpace

MySpace allows you freedom to personalize your profile page putting anything on there that describes you and your business. You can add videos and music and create an individual look to the page. MySpace allows you to search for customers or prospects based on demographics. You can connect with other people like Facebook. You can also create or join groups based on specific topics. It was originally created for very young people and still has that bias. Many people create pages that take minutes to load even using a high speed internet connection which can turn off all but the most patient of individuals.

Twitter

Twitter allows you to communicate with your customers in real time. It is a great way to get a buzz going about your business in conversations of 140 characters or less. Each message is called a tweet. People can sign up to follow you on Twitter to read everything you have to say. It is a great way to communicate to your customers using your mobile phone.

YouTube

With the advent of YouTube, anyone can be a star or at least can make a video statement about anything. You can promote your business on YouTube and send your YouTube video out to many other video sites and RSS feeds. It is free to subscribe to YouTube. You create your own channel and people can subscribe to your channel. You can also create your own YouTube group.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional network and is good if your business requires you to connect with other professionals or businesspeople. You submit your profile listing your business, your experience and skills. You can then connect with other businesspeople by joining company groups and user groups and personal connections.

Digg

Digg allows you to share with others something that you like. You can use Digg in two ways, to comment on other people’s articles, blogs, videos, or images or submit your own and have other Digg members comment on it. The most popular items jump to the home page of their category. This is a great way to get the word out about your business if it the item you submit becomes really popular.

There are other social media sites but the ones I have mentioned are the most popular and I would suggest you pick one of them to start. When you have mastered all of them you can look at StumbleUpon, Reddit, Yelp, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, Badoo, Bebo, and PeopleString.

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