Let’s examine just a few tips on how your business can communicate on social sites.

1. When using Social Media, be current and stay on topic. People are looking for news or a piece of information that could help them, entertain them, keep them informed, based on what their specific needs are. With that in mind, you can give your audience what you expect they are looking for, and build an even better relationship with them. Keep them updated about the information you are furnishing and pass along news they may be looking for. By doing this, they will see that you are providing what they want, and this builds your credibility.

2. Blatant sales pitches don’t work on the social web; so if you’re planning to do some hardcore selling then you’re going to be disappointed. When you get online and start bragging about what you have to offer, people are going to resent you right away. Your customers want help, not to be cheated out of their money. If you can make them see that you can help them with their problem in a small way, they will be glad to buy the products you offer them. You will want to be very easy with your approach when you’re selling to your target group, and it really pays off to pre-sell to your target audience or even educate them.  In other words – start way before the sale.   If you can teach them something they can’t be taught anywhere else, they’ll gladly buy anything you recommend.

3. SEO still plays a role in Social Media, so don’t forget to optimize your Facebook page and any other Social Sites. You can optimize almost all content for the search engines and that’s what matters. For example, if you have a fan page on Facebook then you can include your primary keywords in it to help it rank well. Or if you are using Twitter, then you can optimize your tweets correctly to get search engine traffic. This will bring in far more prospective customers and will help you get the most out of social networking in the long term. In the end, you’ll probably also pick up some extra organic traffic, and that’s always a good thing.

In conclusion, we should all understand the importance of taking social sites seriously when in business. If you desire to obtain more exposure and popularity for your website, then really think about these suggestions and use them.  You may just see how simple it is to grow your company and become successful. 

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners to maximize their money making potential online.

LinkedIn on the other hand is different kettle of fish to any of the other social networks.  LinkedIn is used by more professionals but it is also being used by companies to get a real sense of what that potential person is all about.

Here’s a summary of LinkedIn benefits:

• Search Options. LinkedIn lets you search for companies, jobs and answers to questions, as well as for people.  For salespeople the ability to search companies and locate additional network connections within those companies gives you a competitive advantage over others not using LinkedIn to the fullest.
• Gain Expert Status or Credibility in your field. You can either post a question to the entire LinkedIn population or to segments of the network.  Updated and expanded functions on LinkedIn enabled members to ask and answer questions within specific groups in which they are members.  By becoming an active giver of information, you create credibility and trust with a wide range of people.
• Visibility of Blog posts.  Using one of the blog posting applications included with LinkedIn, you can publish your blog posts directly to your LinkedIn profile and to any and all of your groups.  This feature enables you to give your blog much broader visibility across the LinkedIn network.

Now Facebook has become extremely popular with now more than 500 million users signed up; it has become a place not only for people but for brands too.

Here’s a summary of Facebook benefits:

• Primarily a social site. People learn more about you as a person.  Facebook gives you a great opportunity to let down some barriers and help your business customer learn more about you.  LinkedIn does not provide as much freedom for knowing the person beyond a “resume” like profile as Facebook does.
• Versatility. Facebook enables you to set up a personal profile, a professional profile, a business page or a fan page.  You have all kinds of choices for putting yourself and your business in front of your customers. 
• Facebook ads. For business Facebook gives you the opportunity to purchase a pay-for-click ad to target a unique niche. 

So which of the two is the most valuable to you? Ultimately, you must look at each platform and decide how you can create a social media strategy for your business.

If you want to learn more about Facebook you can get instant access to your FREE copy of ‘My Facebook Formula’ to get you started – http://FreeFacebookTrafficNow.com

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners to maximize their money making potential online.

The motto “keep it simple” goes a long way here, and with that in mind, you can also download your Free copy of ‘My Facebook Formula’ which will help you better understand Facebook Marketing ===> www.FreeFacebookTrafficNow.com

Now, here are the top seven ways for entrepreneurs and small businesses to maximize their presence on Facebook with minimum resources.

1. Manage expectations: Set realistic goals for your approach to social media and you won’t be disappointed. Don’t expect to get thousands of fans within your first month, but think more along the lines of a two or three digit number. Then if you hit something larger than you originally anticipated, you’ll be pleasantly surprised and that will give you momentum.

2. Make time: Unless you can find an intern willing to plan your media campaigns for free, cultivating a Facebook presence doesn’t have to be a full-time job nor something that eats up all your free time. Try to set aside an hour a day to work on your business’s page, post updates and communicate directly with customers and fans.

3. Learn as much as you can: Take notes based on your experiences with Facebook’s pages and other business services — at the very least, write down questions about things you don’t understand so you can make a note to look them up later. Make a habit of reading as much as you can on this part of the site, without overdoing it.  Make a start with your free copy of ‘My Facebook Formula===> www.FreeFacebookTrafficNow.com

4. Start with a small budget: It’s possible to promote your business on Facebook without spending anything. At some point you might get the itch to buy advertising, which certainly helps but also presents the temptation to overspend. You’re better off starting out doing small test ads to see what kind of performance you get for your money, and then ramp up when you figure out which demographics and key words you want to target.

5. Post cool status updates: Make your profile work for your page by posting witty status updates that encourage your friends to engage with your business page. Apply that same sense of wit to the goal of one post per day to your page’s wall. If you can phrase it as a question, so much the better, because that will inspire responses from your community.

6. Have one-on-one conversations: Send a thank-you message right after someone clicks “like” on your page, and make a point of responding to messages and wall posts within 24 hours. Pay careful attention to whatever fans tell you on your page, and try to respond to their needs.

7. Don’t spam: People have gotten pretty tired of mass messaging and excessive numbers of posts filling up news feeds — don’t contribute to this noise and fans will appreciate it. When you have something to say to your followers, put it on your wall, not in their inboxes.

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners to maximize their money making potential online.

Claim your FREE step-by-step Facebook Formula Now ===> www.FreeFacebookTrafficNow.com

First off, visit the following three sites and complete the following eight steps on each (where applicable)…

Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter

And the eight steps…

1. Join. Pick the same username at every place, and make it match your brand if possible.

2. Set up your profile and don’t be arrogant. Be personal and touchable. Link them together and link them back to your main site as much as possible.

3. Join groups (particularly LinkedIn and Facebook) that pertain to your niche and add some friends with similar interests.

4. Observe for a minimum of one week. Don’t sell. Don’t link to anything. Watch. Listen. Learn.

5. Start giving. That doesn’t mean you have to give stuff away, it just means that you need to establish yourself as a giver, in general. Pass along helpful and meaningful information. Add value to the lives and livelihoods of others. Support people. Help people. Encourage people.

6. Build a community (aka, a tribe). After you’ve observed quietly, and after you’ve contributed something to others, then and only then should you ask for something. When you start asking for support, be reciprocal.

7. Become a search ninja. You must search to be successful in social, and knowing all the specific Google operators can help you get to what you need for your marketing efforts fast (such as content creation that requires research).

8. Automate where it makes sense, but do so carefully. Setting up feeds to auto-tweet when you add new content to your blog or share something in Google Reader may make sense. But careful not to automate things like direct messages, something that may irk those on the receiving end.

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.

Feel Free to Connect with Me:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/EliotOgelman

Twitter:     http://www.Twitter.com/EliotOgelman

LinkedIn:   http://uk.linkedin.com/in/eliotogelman

Now if you don’t already have a Fan page you need to get on the bandwagon and get one right away.  Facebook currently has an Alexa ranking of 2 which makes it the second most popular website after Google; this means your fan page will be indexed faster on Google and other search engines.

So here are the hot tips, in no particular order…..

1. Invite People From Your Facebook Friends List(s)

Have you segregated your Facebook friends into lists yet?  If you haven’t done so already it is one of the best ways of boosting your fan base.  Simply click on ‘Suggest to Friends’, then type in the name of your friends list.  An invitation will then be sent automatically to that list.  It may take a little while for everyone to join so I suggest you send invites to your lists on a fairly regularly, but not enough to annoy people.  The names of those who have already joined will be ‘grayed-out’ so you don’t have to worry about sending duplicate invites.

2. Find People with Facebook Search

Using the Facebook search feature will allow you to have an insight into some of the conversations going on among your own community – ‘Posts by friends’, as well as everyone else – ‘Posts by Everyone’.

For example if your specialty is helping people make more money online, try typing in something like “I need to make more money” or similar.  Then have a quick scan to see who you could contact directly.  Then contact them saying something like this: “Hi______, I saw your Facebook comment on_____, I have a great Fan page with some free gifts to help get you started”….etc.

3. Fan Page Twitter App

Do you have Twitter?  If you do the Facebook Fan Page Twitter Application is great at driving your Twitter following direct to your fan page.  When you post any sort of status update, there will be an update on Twitter with a shortened Bit.ly URL link back to your page.  There are other Facebook and Twitter integration tools but this technique appears to be effective.

4. Facebook Fan Box Widget

Do you have a blog or website?  The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a must-have widget to add to your blog or website.  This widget allows you to show your fan base and allow new fans to join instantly.  If you have several social media profiles this is a great way to cross-reference all your sites.  As a bare minimum you should pop a Facebook fan ‘button’ on your website or blog.

5. Facebook Ads for Targeted Fans

Facebook Ads are a great way to drive targeted traffic to your fan page.  So why are Facebook Ads so powerful?  Facebook is incredibly personal these days and they know everything about their members e.g. how old they are, likes, interests, favorite bands etc.  This information allows you to target people that have a good chance of liking your page.  This type of targeting is hard to beat.

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.

Feel Free to Connect with Me:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/EliotOgelman

Twitter:     http://www.Twitter.com/EliotOgelman

LinkedIn:   http://uk.linkedin.com/in/eliotogelman

Here are my Top Tips on How to Be Successful with Social Media:

1. Always respond – to the good and the bad. Let your audience know that you’re there with them and let them feel like they have a direct line to you.

2. Listen Intently. This is a huge mistake most online marketers make. They want to push their own agenda and it doesn’t work. This audience is the key to success, and they’re telling you exactly what they want. “Give the people what they want!” It’s that simple.

3. Be consistent. So many who have failed did so because they didn’t stick to this rule. Update consistently and produce fresh content on a schedule. People come back when they know they could be missing something. We are creatures of habit. Help your audience create a habit out of you.

4. Content is King. Today, he/she who has the gold does not make the rules. They simply have more money to create more content! Status updates, photos, blog posts, events, episodes, shout outs, discussion boards, press releases and articles.  All of it is content, and you should always be adding more. 

5. Context is the Kingdom.  Create Value in Everything. This especially applies to rules two and four. Always be sure what you’re posting has some type of appeal to your audience. Find out what they want and adapt your content accordingly. When people find value in what you’re saying they post comments, share it and make it viral, and that’s the goal!

6. Make it special. Create incentives for people to join your network and tune into them regularly.  Make them feel like they’re a part of something exclusive and fun, even though anyone can join.

7. Stand out from the crowd. The average Facebook user is connected to 80 fan pages, and Facebook has over 30 billion pieces of new content posted EACH MONTH. You’re competing for attention, how are you going to get it?  Your profile picture is a very simple and visual method to do this – make sure your profile / Fan-page picture is set to 200 x 600 to achieve maximum affect.

8. Create Evangelists. Get your audience to promote your brand. Truly understanding your audience will allow you to appeal to them so well that they will take ownership of your brand (think about the Apple iPhone or ipod) and sell your brand for you. Nothing sell products faster than your own customers (through comments, testimonies, sharing content, etc.)

9. Measure results. Look at your inputs and correlate them with the outputs. In other words, see if what you’re doing is working, and identify which things generate the biggest buzz.  A Free and simple way you could do this would be by using Bit.ly.  Once again it’s free and tells you how many people are clicking on your link – and where they’re located.  Very useful.

10. Have (a lot) of fun and love what you do. It may not always be smooth sailing, but when you’re audience sees the genuine passion for what you’re doing you can be sure they’ll listen up.

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.

Feel Free to Connect with Me:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/EliotOgelman

Twitter:     http://www.Twitter.com/EliotOgelman

LinkedIn:   http://uk.linkedin.com/in/eliotogelman

Social media can offer many benefits to your business. It can help you learn about and reach out to your customers, make your business website more visible and relevant to search engines, show that you’re keeping up with technological advances, and promote your business faster and further than ever before possible. Want to learn more and get started? Here are my six top secrets for making the most of social media to promote your business or products.

1. Find out what they’re saying about you. The first step is to find out what people are saying about your business online. Social media sites offer search functions that let you search for content related to your business or products. If you don’t see anything out there, or what you see isn’t what you want, you can do something about it.

2. Start a blog and post regularly. It’s easy to add a free blog to your business website. You can use your free blog to talk about what your business is doing, link to other blogs in the same or similar industries and even offer promotions via your blog.  Visit WordPress.org to get started – it’s FREE.

3. Make a Facebook Fan Page. A Facebook Fan Page lets you share all kinds of information about your business with people who love business. It helps you find the people most interested in your business by letting them find you.  You can also create cool banners and use opt-in forms to capture leads form all this traffic online.

4. Post photos and videos. Pictures and videos speak louder than words. Flickr and YouTube are good places to put videos and pictures of your product or service, as well as how-to videos and commercials.  Use PixelPipe.com to go viral – you can upload a photo and broadcast to ALL your social networks at the click of a single button!

5. Leverage links and bookmarks. Social media sites are great because they let you link back to your business website. This increases the number and quality of links to your business website, which increases its credibility and relevance in the eyes of your human audience and automated search engines bots. Another way to leverage links is with social bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious. Add a button to your web pages to let visitors bookmark them easily.

6. Advertise on social media sites. One of the newest frontiers in Internet advertising is using social media sites. While this form of advertising is still new, and advertising on these sites is not as sophisticated as other forms of online advertising, it allows you to target your advertising to visitors most likely to visit and buy from your business website.

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.

Connect with me:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/EliotOgelman

Twitter:     http://www.Twitter.com/EliotOgelman

LinkedIn:   http://uk.linkedin.com/in/eliotogelman

In the sections below, I will share some simple principles for maximizing your use of web 2.0 and social media marketing to build your income online. Here are a few of my best ideas on this topic.

1. Know Your Customer

Your social media marketing efforts will degenerate into a waste of time, money and attention if you do not already have your core customer well defined. You should ask yourself a few questions like:

• Who Do I Want To Sell To Or Share With?
• What Knowledge, Passions, And Skills Could I Leverage?
• What Problems Are The People I Know Dealing With?
• What Are The Problems For Which I Need And Want A Solution?

These questions can help you decide on the market you want to work with. Areas you could successfully target include health and fitness, dating and relationships, marriage, technology and tech products, internet marketing, business, career, etc.  These are some of the most popular.

2. Identify Where They Are

Your next step after identifying who you want to work with, communicate with and sell to, is to identify which websites or social platforms they congregate in and what web 2.0 tools and services they are likely to use. This varies widely and depends on the marketplace you choose.

For instance, if you are involved in consumer products you would be best served to use a mix of broader social networking sites (like Facebook and Twitter) and professional specialty networks that are directly related to your niche.

3. Create a Content-Based Attraction Funnel

Monetizing social media programs is most easily done by connecting your social media networking, engagement and content with easy to sell back-end programs like information products and paid virtual events (teleseminars, webinars, membership programs).

You can either create your own information products, or sign up to be an affiliate for products and programs that are relevant to the marketplace you have chosen. At that point, you want to start sharing authoritative, informative, entertaining and relevant content with your social media networks.

Whether you decide to set up your own website, or just settle for using the market-relevant platforms online, I strongly recommend signing up for an email marketing account. Services like Aweber.com and MailChimp.com (which have free options) are tremendously useful. Using these services you can set up email capture forms with which you can begin to build targeted lists to send email marketing campaigns to.

4. Engage and Sell

Other than developing your own new technology that gets used by millions of people, the easiest way to make money online is to sell a product or service directly, or represent them for a cut of income.

By successfully connecting your social media traffic to an email list, you gain more control to do the continuous direct marketing that has proven to be most profitable online. However, many marketers have also been successful at creating significant affiliate income just by maintaining engagement on these Web 2.0 properties and then sending their audience directly to affiliate opportunities.

No matter which tactic you employ, always keep up with the culture of the social networks you are participating in. The written and unwritten codes of conduct vary for each. What works successfully on Twitter, may be completely unacceptable on LinkedIn.

Eliot Ogelman is an entrepreneur, online marketer and author who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.

Connect with me:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/EliotOgelman

Twitter:     http://www.Twitter.com/EliotOgelman

LinkedIn:   http://uk.linkedin.com/in/eliotogelman

1- Social Bookmarking: This is a clever way to essentially give your content more votes and improve its ranking on the search engines. Simply use a bookmarking site such as Digg or Propeller to bookmark a link to an article or video that you’ve posted and instantly improve your rank on Google or yahoo.

2- Forums: Another fantastic method of free social media marketing is to participate strategically on online discussion forums. Provide value and helpful links and info while also providing links back to your websites or blogs through anchor texting.  You should be where your audience are hanging out.

3- Social Networking: Twitter and Facebook are excellent free social media marketing tools that you can use to promote your business.  They are great for making fantastic connections and contacts to share helpful tips with and provide more opportunities for driving traffic to your websites and getting more prospects. Just be sure to find the right balance. Remember that social networking is all about making a connection and providing value. Never make a nuisance of yourself by just spamming and posting your links all day long.

4- Keyword Research: While this may not appear very social at first glance, it is absolutely critical that you remember to use relevant long-tail keywords within your posts to be sure that the search engines will find your content and give you priority placement among the search page results.

Learning Social Media Marketing:

Remember, that free Social Media Marketing and Networking is a technique that requires patience, balance and careful strategy. Be sure to invest in your learning and consider a mentor who has the experience to train you to be as effective as possible in all your online marketing efforts.

Eliot Ogelman is a multiple business owner, entrepreneur and online marketer who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EliotOgelman

Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/EliotOgelman

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/eliotogelman

1. Ask Them Questions

Asking relevant questions is one of the easiest ways to engage with your audience. They are a great way to get people to take action.

Here’s a quick example…

What are your top tips for…….?  Or How can XXXXX help with….?

2. Join In

Likewise when people ask you a question, you should contribute by giving them answers. Don’t just look at a question and decide that it’s too hard to answer. Remember how you deal with that question is going to be someone’s lasting impression of you. Make sure you add real value in your answers and you’ll soon attract a regular following of people who will look out and follow your posts, answers etc.  Social media is all about being social.

3. Posting Frequency

Your readers or followers will be more likely to keep following you if you follow a posting plan. It doesn’t matter what social media platform you’re using, like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, just be sure to set a regular schedule and stick to it. Even if it’s just once or twice a week, your followers will know what to expect, so make sure you’re consistent.

4. Show Your Humanity

Social Media Marketing will be much more effective if you show people you’re human. Post videos of you on holiday, at seminars or talk about them on your blog. It’s been said that people buy people first, so if you give them a chance to get to know you better, followers and sales are likely to follow.

5. Be the Information Hub

You can act as an information hub where your audience knows to congregate because of the information and resources you’re providing.

6. Add Value

Think before you post any content. Your content needs to be relevant, related to your audiences needs, wants and desires, and add value to them.  This is so crucial!

7. Never Spam

This brings up the final point. Never ever spam. If you want to sell, a more softly softly approach is to use social media for directing people back to your blog or website. Then provide valuable content on your blog, with links to your products in logical and relevant places. That way you’re not pushing a sale onto your customers, they’re finding your products through their own free will.

The key to social media marketing is revealing your personality, providing your audience with useful and relevant content, and making sure you meet their expectations by posting regularly and on subject.

Eliot Ogelman is a multiple business owner, entrepreneur and online marketer who’s been involved in growing digital based businesses since 2002.  Eliot now enjoys working with different types of entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking to maximize their money making potential online.