Social Media Marketing Guide – Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace to Grow Your Business

As I mentioned in one of my previous articles, Social Media has became extremely popular in the last few years.

Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube are growing faster than any other type of social communication.

Social Media is an enormous untapped source of leads, prospects and business partners for YOUR business and best of all it is FREE.

Therefore, in order to benefit from the social media madness, you will have to know how exactly to monetize this ultimate untapped source of potential business partners.

This is exactly what I am going to be covering today. I want to show you exactly what you need to do in order to generate results with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace.

However, Before I get into the specific details of how you should be using each one of the mentioned above sites, I would like to point out one thing. The ultimate purpose of every single social media website is Relationship Building. This is the sole purpose you should be driven by when you join a group on Facebook or sending out a Tweet.

Relationship Building is an essential ingredient to a Successful Internet Marketing Business and the sooner you grasp this concept the better.

Let’s get started!

MySpace

Only a year ago, MySpace was the biggest and fastest growing community on the Internet with more than 240 Million registered users. Today MySpace has lost it’s popularity with the users but it hasn’t lost it with the search engines.

To this day, MySpace is one of the first sources Google turns to when in need of information. What this means is that you can use it for your benefit by creating different MySpace profiles to generate more Search Engine Traffic for your particular business/opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong here, it doesn’t mean that you must use it only for that. You still have the opportunity to socialize on MySpace quite effectively, but right now, the main benefit of MySpace in my eyes is the SEO juice that you can squeeze out of it.

Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length, which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them also known as followers.

Twitter is an amazing social network, which really qualifies for the expression “Social Media Madness”. If you don’t know what I mean, just get yourself over four thousand followers, as I did, and you will see exactly what I mean. My Twitter home page is pure madness and socializing on Twitter without a client is not an option anymore.

Nevertheless, what makes Twitter unique besides the 140 character limit is the ability to Drive Massive Viral Traffic to Your Website.

Twitter is the easiest tool to drive traffic with especially if you are running a blog or a newsletter, it has an insane Viral Power Potential to it.

If you ever heard an expression “Word of Mouth Marketing” and did not know what it mean, than Twitter explains it very well. Just imagine if your Tweet with a link back to your site goes viral. Imagine the tweet being ReTweeted about 300 times. Imagine if each of those ReTweets only generated 3-4 clicks at a time, how much traffic would you get?

That’s right-A LOT!

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google.

YouTube, being the biggest video sharing network online, is a great place to do some video marketing. But Why is Video Marketing so damn important? Why is it so Crucial that you do it? Yes, that’s right! Relationship Building.

Can you think of a better way of establishing a relationship with a complete stranger? What can be more powerful when it comes down to building trust with another person on the internet than video? What can make more impact on that person than watching You move, listen to You talk and hearing Your thoughts coming out of Your mouth instead of reading them on his 15” laptop screen?

If you can think of a better way of doing it(besides live conversation with a web cam, of course) than please, be my guest and reveal it to me, because to this day, I haven’t found something better then Video Marketing.

Facebook

A Harvard University student originally founded Facebook with couple of his roommates in order to create a virtual community exclusive to the Harvard University attendees. Website membership was initially limited but later expended to other colleagues until later on Facebook became available to anyone aged 13 and over.

Right now Facebook is one of the biggest social communities with over 200 million active users. However, what makes it different from MySpace, Twitter and YouTube than? Why is it so essential for your Social Media Domination plan?

Well, personally, I can’t answer that question with a specific benefit. Facebook is just a great place to Build STRONG, BULLETPROOF, ROCK SOLID Relationships. I haven’t yet found a community where people are more open and ready to socialize with complete strangers all over the planet.

To me, Facebook is like another huge family. I truly admire and respect every single one of my Facebook friends. It is so easy to get to know people and connect with them on Facebook. It is so easy to get lost in endless chats and conversations there.

I have many of my friends, simply leading another Life there! Facebook is very easy to fall in love with and it definitely leaves other Social Networks in the dust when it comes down to building a strong long lasting relationship with a complete stranger.

Having shared these insight with you, I only wish to point out one more time that your main goal on any single social media site and in every single social community should be first to Build Relationships while driving traffic and generating leads second.

Quick Start to Internet Marketing

Many people out there are looking for a quick start to internet marketing. I understand. You know being online and marketing yourself with blogging, internet marketing and social networking is essential, but you don’t know the best way to go about it, and you have a million questions.

This massive access to information causes what’s called “paralysis by analysis”. In other words, we’re so fixated on learning what we need to do, we fail to act. This is death for business. You need to act, but you don’t want to screw things up.

So here is a quick start to internet marketing checklist that will give you what you need to get started. It contains a little philosophy and a few specific actions that will get you off and running. There is a lot of value in knowing you’re starting off on the right foot, so I hope this helps.

Quick Start to Internet Marketing

  1. Make the decision that your focus is going to be building a real business…or extending your existing business. Do not allow your sole focus to be making money. If your focus is on building a real business, creating a good reputation and brand and creating value for others, it’s hard to screw things up. It’s when we decide to focus solely on making money that we start doing crappy, spammy things that we will regret later…and that will not do us any good. This is the first step, and it’s easy. Just decide that your focus is going to be on creating value for your customers, not just selling stuff. With that, you have already cleared half the hurdles. Believe it or not, it really is that simple!
  2. Start a blog. Don’t over think it. Don’t dwell on it for more than five minutes. Pick a platform, and fire it up. If you want my specific advise, I recommend using WordPress, and I recommend having a professional set it up for you. Any number of professionals can do it for you. WordPress can easily be search engine optimized, and it is highly extensible. Some of the most successful blogs on the internet use WordPress, and for good reason. That said, it’s more important to have a blog than it is to make absolutely certain that every detail is perfect. Your blog will serve as the hub of everything you do to market yourself online. It is your home. You need a place to hang your hat. You need a blog.
  3. Post to your blog regularly. The more you blog, the more you will learn. The most important thing is to get started. This can be made very complicated if you want it to be, but it can also be simple. It is not rocket science, and if you put in the effort you will learn everything you need to know simply by doing it. You get out what you put in. Again, if you’re focusing on creating value for your customers, your blog will be on target.
  4. Get on Facebook and Twitter. Are there other social networks? Heck yes there are. Is there value in checking them out and learning about them? Heck yes. But this is a quick start to internet marketing guide, right? So let’s keep it simple. The fact is that Facebook is huge, and Twitter is massively important and an indispensable tool. You can do a lot of damage with just these two. Just as with blogging, use them regularly. An inactive profile is worthless to you. Just like if you leave your house unattended…it will deteriorate over time, this is true for your internet property as well. You have to maintain it for it to grow and remain valuable. Use your social networking profiles for being social and meeting people. Sure, link out to your blog posts and such, but keep the content you produce 99% social. Believe it or not, people know you sell widgets even if you don’t tell em. It’s linked up on your page, see? So they know already. You don’t have to tell them every five minutes. Meet people and concentrate on getting to know and learning from others with similar interests. After doing this for a while, you will start to get these mysterious messages in your inbox. They will be coming from people who have visited your site and are interested in what you’re selling, and you’ll wonder where all this magical activity is coming from. Some of it’s coming from Twitter, believe it or not. And it will have all happened without you having to hard sell anyone. This stuff works really well, if you work it. Let it take time. It’s fun anyway, so why turn it into hard work?
  5. Let it take some time. Like I mentioned in the previous step, this stuff doesn’t happen instantly. One thing about internet marketing is that people often expect immediate results. I’m not sure why that is. It must come from a misconception about what’s happening. When you give someone a business card at a social event, do you expect them to buy something from you right there on the spot? No. You meet 28 people that night, and 9 of them call you back over the next few weeks. You build it from there. This is how it works. Social networking has become confused with being this new phenomenon, and we think it’s complicated. It’s not. Social networking is people with common interests hanging out, talking. This has been going on for ages. It’s how business is done. And building a business takes time.
  6. Read and learn. Study what you’re doing. Read other blogs. Look at other websites, especially within the same field as you’re working. Never stop this. Learning and stealing ideas from your competitors is another age old business principle that is not ever going to go away. Use it to your advantage.
  7. Don’t quit. Be consistent. Things take time. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.