Inphotek

In a social setting, a user is someone who picks up friends for selfish reasons. Every friend a user aquires has only one purpose; to benefit themselves. The other person's wants and needs are not important. Social Media is a lot like regular social settings. There are users or "spammers" aquire friends for no other purpose than to bombard them with advertising. Your business needs to follow accepted social manners in order to expect high returns from it.

Image yourself in a social setting. Do you randomly quote commercials to your friends? Do your friends pester you to buy their products or services? Most people avoid friends who only seem desperate to have their money. They avoid conversing with people who have nothing to say other than trying to sell them something. If you will not tolerate these types of conversations, your business should not start similar conversations.

Social Media is really just a new way of spreading the word via word of mouth advertising. The is to get other people talking about your business. So how do you get them talking about your business?

Social Media is the New Word of Mouth Advertising Venue

Word of mouth has traditionally been associated with the "White Sale". People hear from their friends about a sale at a local store. More people go to the sale because they heard about it from a friend. It goes the same way with any kind of references from a friend. People put more faith in a friend's recommendation rather than an advertisement. Their friend's recommendations mean more than someone else's recommendations.This is certainly an option for an internet business but it isn't the way to get the ball rolling. Businesses start without recommendations.

A business needs to find friends. Friends are people who know and like the business. Of course, starting out, a business has no friends. You need to remember that people know and talk to people they like and consider friends. Starting out, a business is like a kid on the first day at a new school during the middle of the school year, friendless and alone. To find friends, the kid has to smile and talk to other kids at the school. After they start talking about the things that interest them, other kids with the same interests will invite them into their group.

In social media, you will have to be the one who steps forward and says "hello". If it's a forum, a good introductory paragraph will get the attention of people in the group. Be friendly and upbeat. Talk about your interests, not about your business's needs. The key is to start out as a personable individual. Your business needs to have a "person" interacting with the business' friends.

After the initial contact is made, a business needs to maintain momentum and be more than a friend. At this time, the business needs to start benefitting the friends. It still means that you have to be helpful to your friends. To benefit a business must have other people talking about and with the business. Generally people know and talk to people they like and consider friends. At this point, you've already established the friendship. You business has to remain a friend. The inital friend group may or may not purchase your products or services but they may know someone who will purchase them.

To expand the friendships and get people talking about your business, you must be a "social media" friend. This type of friendship revolves around four overlapping activities.

The most common activity is providing entertaining conversations. Viral videos and funny anecdotes are different ways to provide entertainment. People pass these stories around. While they are passing the stories and vidoes, they are passing your name around if it is attached to the story or video. Videos can be captioned and frames added to include the company's name.

Entertaining your social media friends can help get people talking but it does not help people take the business seriously. It is important to not only be funny but serious lest the business be the class clown. The key is to intersperse the entertainment and conversation with important industry news. It should be news pertaining to the interests of the followers.

Another conversation topic worth talking about is anything that educates the participants. This works particularly well for products and services that require explanation. Training or teaching disciplines work well for spreading training information. The key is to reveal a small part of the training but not all of the training. Educating friends gives them something to talk about and to provide to their friends. Teaching your social media friends empowers them with new skills.

Educational articles are not the only free product that can empower your social media friends. Offering free samples and/or free software products can empower them to save time and do more with their time.

The key to benefitting from Social Media is to be a friend. Friends don't quote advertising or pressure others to buy their products or services. The key is to engage your social media friends through conversatins that are fun, informative, educational and provide them with free products that empower them by saving time and money.