Steps To Social Media Marketing

Many business owners are capitalizing on the newest Internet trend—professional social networks. Services like LinkedIn, Konnects, Ecademy, Plaxo and even Facebook and MySpace provide professionals the opportunity to meet and collaborate with colleagues and customers worldwide. Are you taking advantage of this opportunity? If not, here’s what you need to think about in order to get started.

First and foremost, the professionals who use social networking for their business tend to fall into two distinct groups—those who focus on the networking aspect and those who focus on the socializing aspect. Those who emphasize the word “network” are seeking to promote and expand their business. Those who emphasize the word “social” are seeking to promote and expand their Christmas-card list. As a business owner, you want to be part of the former group.

Getting Started

“Begin with the end in mind” is the fifth habit listed in Steven Covey’s book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” It refers to the need to base planning off of what you hope to accomplish. The field of social media marketing is constantly changing, with new sites and new functions cropping up daily. Don’t get caught up in this; instead, choose what social networks you want to be affiliated with based on your marketing goals—and what the site can do for them—rather than on what the social networking site can do in general. Therefore, the first step is to define your goals; then, you can match the tool to the purpose.

Also keep in mind that, once a social-media marketing program begins to be successful, a deluge of invitations to other networks will begin to arrive. A prioritized list of goals will ensure that your social-media marketing plan does not become derailed due to pursuing unrelated social-networking opportunities.

Setting Boundaries & Budgets

Most professional social networks offer a free, basic membership and one or more premium memberships. In most of those that offer premium memberships, it is possible to earn free upgrades by recruiting new members to the network platform. With incentives like that, it is only necessary to spend money on professional social network membership if a specific, paid-premium membership function or service is needed to achieve the goals you have set. This does not, however, mean that social networking is completely free. Building a successful business-based social networking initiative requires time and effort to create the network and communicate with network members and online contacts.

As a result, you should be very critical of the time spent on social-media marketing. Time has a definite value in dollars; therefore, time spent on social-media marketing must provide a real and measurable return on investment. It is all too easy to spend endless hours enjoying the many features of social networking sites—but, to truly make social networking valuable to your business, every minute spent online must have a purpose that contributes to achieving your marketing goals.

Communicating & Connecting

The object of social-media marketing is to generate a personal bond with clients and potential clients, and to have a platform to entice those potential clients to become paying customers. This means the network members must become fans of your salon even before they visit the salon. Those who have been networking in real life for years know this can be much harder than turning a satisfied customer into a fan. Unlike in-person networking, online networking limits the level of interpersonal exchange, which means you may have to work a bit harder to develop a rapport with potential customers.

Overall, online professional social networks and social media marketing are the newest tool in a business success kit. Properly used, it promises business expansion and profit growth. For more about utilizing social networking sites to your advantage, check out the article, “Salon Technology: From Software To Social Networking.”

Maurice A. Ramirez is a professional speaker and the founder of High Alert LLC, a consulting firm that helps companies align business continuity plans with personnel and customer behavior during adversity. Board-certified in multiple specialties, Ramirez serves on expert panels for pandemic preparedness and healthcare surge planning, and he also is founding chairman of the American Board of Disaster Medicine and a Senior Physician-Federal Medical Officer. For more information, visit his Web site, www.high-alert.com.