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The Crucial First Step of Any Social Media Marketing Campaign

If you thinking of doing social media marketing for your business blog, the first thing you should do is find out where your target audience is hanging out.

You may think, that’s pretty obvious. But some business don’t do this crucial first step. They pick a social media site to participate on, but they don’t research that site first to see if their target audience actually uses that site.

An example of this is a wedding blogger trying to promote her site on Digg. Digg is a very popular site but the vast majority of Digg users are not interested in weddings.

Another example is joining a social media site because it’s the “next big thing”. Right now, Twitter is growing in popularity and some social media experts are saying you need to join Twitter or you’ll get left behind. However, much of this talk is hype. Many industries still don’t have a big presence on Twitter.

So, how can you find out where you target audience is hanging out? How can you discover which social media sites they are using?

In my next post, I’ll give some practical ways for locating your target audience on the internet. You can subscribe for free to get updated whenever I publish my next posts.

A Great Example of a Business Blog That Created Multiple Income Streams

Signal Versus Noise is one of the best business blogs to emulate.  It’s written by the team of 37signals.  37signals sells small business software.

In a recent blog entry, Jason Fried, the company founder, talked about the multiple income streams created by their company blog.  He wrote:

Money One: A lot of our ideas originate on this blog. We post articles which generate traffic. We make money off the traffic by running Deck ads in the sidebar. We make a few thousand a month off The Deck ads.

Money Two: We bundled up the best blog posts about our software development philosophy and turned it into a PDF book called Getting Real. We sell the PDF for $19. We’ve made a few hundred thousand dollars from the PDF.

Money Three: We take the Getting Real PDF and turn it into a paperback at Lulu.com. We sell the paperback for $25 and we make a few thousand a month on royalties. The paperback is currently ranked the 4th best seller on Lulu.

Money Four: We took the content from Getting Real and produced a Getting Real conference series. We held a few conferences a year and made about $50K per conference. We’ve produced about 5 of these conferences.

Also, he didn’t talk about this, but if there are two links on top of the blog.  One points to a job board and the other to a gig board.  Those are two other income streams that were made possible because of their popular blog.

What about traffic?

Some of you may be thinking.  37signals’ blog has a lot of traffic.  That’s why they can have multiple income streams.

Yes, that’s true.  You do need traffic or your blog income streams will produce very little income.

However, if you’re producing quality content and marketing your blog consistently, your traffic will grow.  It may take a while (6 months to 2 years) to build your traffic to respectable levels but the rewards are definitely worth it.  You’ll increase sales and be able to create other profitable income streams.

Authenticity, or Being Real, Rules on the Web

With the web being much more social today than in the last couple of years, many online entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this trend.  They are making their websites more interactive.  They are participating on community sites like forums, blogs, and voting sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

With all this social activity, the big question for businesses seems to be, “How do you actually interact and communicate with internet users to increase sales?”

Understanding the Average Internet User

To answer this question effectively, you need to understand the mindset of the average internet user.

The average user is not looking so much for slick packaging but authenticity.

Why authenticity?  Because in a social atmosphere like the social web, people act like people.  They don’t act like businesses.

The proper metaphor for the web is not an upscale retail store or stuffy office environment where employees interact with customers using “Sir” and “Ma’am”.

No, the web is much more like a laid-back pub or coffeehouse where people hang out.  These people value community and being real.

You may be wondering, since the web is like this, how does one do business?  You’re thinking, business doesn’t get done in a coffeehouse.

Well, maybe not the actual sale.  But realize that when people hang out, they often make product and service recommendations and non-recommendations.  Also, they show off their purchases.

Here are the type of conversations that go on all over the world, offline and online.

In a pub: “My car is having problems.  Could you recommend a trustworthy mechanic?  I went ABC Mechanic last month and they ripped me off.”

In a Starbucks: “Check out my iPhone.  It’s awesome.”

On Twitter: “Does anyone know if XYZ Web Hosting provides good service and 99% uptime?”

On a blog: “I just got my big screen TV from John Doe’s online store.  I definitely would recommend him to anybody.”

Be Real

If you come off like a business person, you won’t have success.  But if you interact with them like a real person, like a friend that actually wants to help, you’ll gain their trust. And trust is what leads to repeat sales and positive recommendations.

Aaron Wall wrote on page 68 of his discontinued SEO Book:

Write in a conversational tone, as a person, not a company.

Fake fluffery does not go well on the web. People can smell it a mile away. Since the Web started as a non-commercial entity, there are certain etiquettes (or netiquettes) that dictate how we should act. When we go outside these basic ideas, we not only avoid conversion, but also are likely to offend our readers.

Many of the people who have bought this e-book told me they bought it because I sounded honest and real. Some of my blog posts are somewhat random, personal, or humorous, and some people like that.

This is coming from a guy who’s sold over 13,000 copies of his ebook. Many of those were at the price point of $79 before the ebook was repackaged into a training program.

Evaluate Your Business

Look at the text on your website.

  • Is it boring, bland, and filled with ambigious, overused corporate jargon?
  • If you have a blog, are you writing in a conversational tone?
  • Do you have pictures of you and your staff?

Think about how you communicate on social/community websites.

  • Do you write like a real person that seeks to help?  Or are you still in the impersonal, corporate mode?

Improve the Quality of Your Freelancing Network Through Blogging

One big thing I have realized as a part time freelancer is how critical networking is. I’ve gotten all my clients except the very first one through referrals from friends.

But it’s not enough to just know a lot of people. Building a relationship with a high quality contact is better than having many low quality ones. Go for quality over quantity.

I was fortunate because my very first client was well networked. He knew a lot of people and was able to refer me to other high quality clients.

If you want to build relationships that lead to new clients, you can try blogging.

Here’s an example of how blogging can be used to build to profitable business relationships.

Some of the best contacts to network with are the popular bloggers in your niche.

Aaron Wall, one of the most popular SEO bloggers, wrote:

About 5 people a day ask me to recommend an SEO or link builder or site designer…

If you do freelance services in any of those three fields, you could get a lot of work by networking with Aaron.

You could email him, “Hi, I’m an awesome web designer. Can you recommend me to the people that ask you daily for web designer recommendations?” However, if Aaron doesn’t know you, he’ll be hesitant to recommend you.

But what if you had a blog with design content like Photoshop tutorials, CSS tips, and even links and screenshots of your previous work.

Your blog shows that you are serious about providing value to your industry. It is a dynamic, “living” resume that people can read to learn more about you. It increases your credibility with other bloggers because you’re one of them. They can empathize with you about the hard work of consistently producing free quality content.

If you’ve got a great blog, you could write something that connects web design with SEO. Maybe something like “The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes Web Designers Make”. Then, email high profile SEO bloggers like Aaron and point them to your article.

This method is much more effective than “cold-emailing” them because you’ve created something interesting their readers will enjoy.

When they get asked to give recommendations for web designers, you’ll be on their radar.

Also, there’s a chance the bloggers will link to you. If you get links, you’ll get a lot of high quality, pre-qualified traffic. And your reputation will improve since links are the social currency of the web.

How Blogging Helps You Reach More People in Your Industry

In any industry, there are many prospective customers that are not looking to buy at the moment. Instead, they go online looking for useful information.  Later on, maybe when they get their paycheck or when a new product is released, they will want to spend money.

If you can capture these people’s attention with useful information, you have a good chance of getting them to come back to your site when they want to buy something.

For example, let’s pretend you’re a online video game retailer.  Instead of just having an ecommerce site, you decide to blog about the video game industry.  You publish content like video game reviews, news, and strategy.

As you promote your blog, you’ll start getting traffic from video games fans looking for the information on your blog.  These fans are probably are not looking to buy a video game.  However, through your blog content, they’ll remember your site.

Not only that, but many of them will come back to visit your blog.  Blogs are great at attracting repeat visitors.  Blogs are chronologically arranged with the newest posts showing up first.  This means people will want to return to the blog regularly to see if there is new content.

Through your blog, you’ll gain the attention of video game fans.  Whenever these people want to buy a video game, they’ll probably think about buying the video game through your site.  They have a favorable impression of your site because of your useful blog posts.  Also, they “feel at home” on your site because they’ve been there before.

To succeed long-term in your business, you’ll have find ways to reach more people on a consistent basis.  Adding a blog extends your influence to video game fans that are not looking to buy at the moment.

Also, think about the advantage you have over your competitors who don’t have a blog.  Where will people more likely buy video games?  From a store that gives away quality free information on their blog or from a store that only has product descriptions and a shopping cart on their website?

Finally, by targeting all video games fans including those that are not in a buying mood, you’ll receive a huge increase of word of mouth recommendations.  The video game fans that don’t buy have friends that do want to buy.  The non-buyers will recommend your site to their friends as a place to buy video games because they received value from your blog posts.