With all the Buzz about search engine and social media marketing. With the thousands of dollars spend on generating leads, one often keeps wondering what would be their right marketing model so as to generate maximum leads.
Your model is directly linked to the money you have to spend, but you can also have
a marketing model if you don’t have a lot of money. This is very true of social media interesting
Here is a very simple 5 step social media marketing technique
Step 1 – Start a Blog.
I would suggest WordPress in your own sweet domain name for the ones who are slightly tech bend, if not you can use any of the free services like blogger or wordpress.org. The task is to start writing about what you do and how you look at things in your business domain.
Step 2 – Become a Member of Social media sites.
There are tons of them, I would recommend Facebook and LinkedIn to start with, as they have more business value. But you can use the one that suits more for your type of activity. There are also several niche social groups that would love to hear what you have to say. If you are in group of people who understand your business and what you do, you will have more ears and can be part of conversations more easily and contribute better
Step 3 – Become Active in Social Book Marking Sites.
Social Book marking sites like Digg or stumbleupon or reddit are all great ways in which you can get your word out. But one point of caution, these sites all flourish because of the active participants who use them. So just joining them to promote your articles will do no much good unless you actively participate in the community
Step 4 – Twitter and Twitter Search
Twitter is great, but twitter search is sexy. Twitter search allows you to look at conversations in real time so you can actively engage your potential customers. It is not about having 1000 followers, but having 100 active people that you follow and converse with. people who can help you reach where you want and people to whom you can contribute
Step 5 – Call to action
Your website or blog should have a call to action, something that makes visitors engage with you or contact you. Discussion forums are great, so are offers, polls and suggestion widgets that enable people to interact with you. Disqus is a great commenting system that can help you gain a good readership. Also have an RSS and email subscription method for people to subscribe to your blog
Step 6 Email, Phone and connect
The old methods still hold good. While your online activities will get you more traffic to your site, you should not forget the traditional email, chat and phone techniques that help you connect and start building relationships offline. Pick a few good connections online and try taking them offline. People love it if you are genuine and if you have a better value proposition when you take a conversation offline away from the noise of the web.
Step 7 Listen to experts
There are several tools and techniques you can use but this is a good start. This is a ever changing scene with new tools emerging every day, so the secret is that be aware of the changing trends and subscribing to some leading blogs will be a good way to be in touch with what is happening new and using new marketing techniques.
There are many more and I will have a separate blog writing on the tools I use.
Step 8 Follow a Process
Every activity needs a process that you can follow. This is very important for time management as well. Have a frequency for your blogs so once you have a readership they will know when you write and will be sure to read you. You can start with any process that fits you and then tweak it regularly so that you can arrive at the optimum one that meets your goals and time availability.
The idea is to not live an online life, but use the online tools to have a fullest and richer life in the real world
All the best!!!
