Social Media for Small Business

Get High Quality Traffic to Your Site

By Christian

Use this ultra-simple technique to get high quality traffic to your site every day. It works. No, it doesn’t send HUGE traffic to your site. It sends high quality traffic. There is a big difference of course. Huge traffic is great and necessary if you want to make a lot of money from advertising. But as I talk about a lot here, high traffic is only one of many ways to make money online.

My personal experience comes from getting really good conversions from high profit products and services. Some of the sites I run now only get a few thousand visitors a month, but they are highly profitable, because when I get traffic I convert it. And when I convert, I don’t make fifty cents…if you know what I mean. So if you’re offering a truly valuable product or service through your website, you don’t need a lot of traffic. You need GOOD traffic…highly targeted to what you offer.

And the best quality traffic you can get is traffic resulting from personal referrals. Twitter makes this possible, and it is a beautiful thing.

Use Twitter to Get High Quality Traffic

Use this list and let me know how it works for you:

Build a quality network – Yeah, I know. This takes time! It’s OK. It’s worth it. Add people who have interests in line with what you’re offering. They will often follow you back. Also, put your Twitter profile up on all your social profiles, websites, etc. This is how you build your follower count. Use https://search.twitter.com to keep tabs on who’s talking about you or your brand. If someone is talking about how much they love (or even how much they hate) your product, do you think they’re a good person to follow on Twitter? The answer of course is yes.
Install Tweetdeck. Seriously, just do it. It’s the best Twitter client ever, and it will save you a lot of time and help you make better sense of your twitter feed.
Use Tweetdeck to set up ongoing searches for search terms relevant to whatever you’re selling. In other words, if you’re selling “brand xyz widgets”, then “brand xyz widgets” should be one of the searches you have saved in Tweetdeck, bare minimum. When people use the search terms you have saved, they will show up in Tweetdeck automatically. Can you see where this is going?
Talk to them. Thank them for loving you. Thank them for hating on you. Check out their profile, and if you think they’re a good potential buyer for what you sell, follow them.
When appropriate, send them a link to a specific article or other page on their site. **Keep it authentic and conversational. I want to stress that this is not an excuse for spamming people on Twitter. I’ve received my fair share of replies on Twitter when some spammer just responds to something I said with an affiliate link or with a link to a landing page. This is crap, and it’s not what I’m talking about. But if someone is following you and they tweet out something about how they’re really loving a certain band right now, for example…and you happen to have just written a post on how you love that band too…it’s more than appropriate for you to tweet out a link to it.

This takes time, and it takes work. And it is one of the best ways to get great, targeted traffic to your site. Let me know what you think!

How to Really Screw up Your Business With Social Networking

By Christian

As spamming continues to grow on Twitter and other social networks (I’ve been noticing it a lot this past few weeks more than ever), I’m compelled to mention again how easy it is to do more damage to your brand than good when using social networking tools.

Twitter and Facebook are great networking tools, but they’re being treated more and more like get rich quick platforms…as if such a thing really existed. I’m seeing a lot of ads for programs on “How to Use Twitter to Make $10k a month Starting NOW”…and other B.S. like this.

Does anyone actually subscribe to this mentality? I’m taking care not to mention any users or companies specifically. You’re not going to catch me bad mouthing anyone, but you and I both have seen this activity. Here’s the thing:

I think most of these users are more concerned with making money than anything else. They’re not worried about damaging their brand, because they’re not even trying to build a brand. They’re not even TRYING to build a business. They just want to make a few bucks.

I think this kind of shortsightedness is a shame. But the more I see this kind of activity, the more I think this is true. I hope the readers of this blog can see further down the road. Building a real business is NOT that big a deal! Anyone can do it. I hope you can see the truth…spamming out affiliate links and offering no value to your contacts is not a way to build a business. And ironically, it’s also not a good way to even make a few bucks!

When was the last time YOU clicked on a blind link in a piece of spam email you received? When was the last time YOU bought a product through an affiliate link that someone blasted out through an auto-DM on Twitter?

Sensible people don’t buy things this way. It’s just not how it works. If you’re building a real business that you want to be profitable and sustainable, this is the absolute last type of activity you should be involved with.

If people would stop looking for fast money and start actually getting to work, there would be a lot less crap out there. That’s for sure. And they would also learn that making REAL money is not all that difficult.

Have you seen this spamming activity or is it just me?

Do you subscribe to the idea that simply blasting out affiliate links is a way to make money?

How to Use Social Networking Sites for Business

By Christian

I like to keep it simple. Simple is good. Know why? Because it works. Social networking for business is not rocket science, but for some strange reason, many of us WANT it to be! Perhaps it’s human nature. Perhaps if we think it’s complicated, then we will be able to figure it out…and after we figure it out, it will be easy. And our lives will then be easy. And money will fall into our laps without us ever having to lift a finger, because we’ve figured it out. We know the secret!

Perhaps that’s just too much of me running my mouth about this issue! But there’s something real here…something that most of us do not want to admit. We WANT there to be a secret to success in most cases. We WANT there to be some hidden key buried somewhere, and if only we could find it, dig it up, or somehow otherwise discover the key…then all our troubles would be over. We would finally get it, and financial freedom would then be ours. We would arrive. We would be successful.

Here’s the TRUTH:

Success is hard work. Social networking for business is not a get rich quick tool. Social networking has many powerful tools that can greatly enhance your business, but they are not magic. You have to work them if you want results.

Isn’t it just so refreshing when someone takes the time to NOT B.S. you about this stuff? Anyway, you absolutely can make huge gains in your business and sales through using social networking, but you can also waste a lot of time if you do it wrong. So in the name of keeping it simple, here are a few pointers on how to use social networking sites for business.

How to Use Social Networking Sites for Business

Be social. Duh?
Don’t force your growth. It takes time to build a quality network. Do you really want thousands of “friends” who literally don’t know who you are? It just takes time. If you have ONE real, quality, targeted and engaged contact on Facebook, that’s WAY better than 10,000 who are not even cognizant of who you are. Let it take time. Quality, not quantity.
Don’t expect immediate results. When you meet someone at a party, do you expect them to sign a contract with you, hire you or in any other way buy something from you that very night? No, not unless you’re a real sleaze. That’s not the way it works in real life, and it’s not the way it works in social networking.
Don’t hard sell. This is killer. You can do more damage to your brand than anything else. If you’re on Facebook solely to market yourself, shut your account down now. It’s a social site. Branding and selling happens all day long there, but it’s a byproduct, not the primary concern. Allow it to remain a byproduct of you being there, and you will do fine. Once selling and promotion becomes your priority, you will start losing ground immediately.
If you’re using auto-DM on Twitter, turn it off. Seriously. If you think you’re using it tactfully, you’re wrong. If you don’t know what this is, don’t even look into it. You’re better off not even worrying your pretty little head over it. Again, seriously.
Linking out to your site is cool, but don’t do it constantly, and it shouldn’t be the ONLY thing you’re doing. C’mon, who likes a guy or girl who just constantly talks about themselves all day?

Short list, I know. Like I said…it’s simple. If you want to know how to use social networking sites for business, this is as far as you need to take it. Sure, you can get way more complex than this, but why? You don’t over think it when you go to a networking function in real life…guess what, in social networking you ARE networking with real people. It is real life.

You can reach massive numbers of people this way, and social networking is free. What more could you ask for? Let it be simple, let it take time, and go out and rock it!

Do you have any to add to this list? Let me know what you think!

How to Improve Traffic from Your Social Networking

By Christian

This post is part of a series. If you’d like to read from the beginning, check out the other posts so far!

This post of course is entitled “How to Improve Traffic from Your Social Networking”. Notice I said “improve”, not “increase”! As business people who want to sell things and make money online, we always want more traffic. And surely more traffic can be a good thing. But if your traffic is of low quality, you can get all the hits you want, and you’re still not going to reach your goals.

If it was really just about getting more traffic, you could just go purchase pop-under traffic from some traffic broker. You can get hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site like this very quickly. Of course, you won’t make any money this way…it just goes to show you that traffic is not everything. Quality is what counts!

The crux of the high traffic conundrum is that if you’re putting out quality content, and you’re taking steps to attract quality, targeted buyers to your site, high traffic and substantial profits are eventually inevitable. The ease and simplicity of the internet makes us want everything right now…yesterday in fact. I’ve talked with so many business people who run a blog or who have taken on different internet marketing projects, and they get discouraged after only a few weeks. It takes time! If you’re laying the groundwork in the manner I describe in Next Level Blogger, high traffic is on its way! But first, you want to make sure you’re attracting the right traffic.

The Value of Social Networking Traffic

Everyone knows (or SHOULD) that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are great sources of traffic. But like anything else, let’s not just take what falls on our plate. We need to stop being happy with just getting hits. Look past the numbers and figure why…WHY are people visiting your site, and how can you bring more targeted buyers to your site every day? Here are a couple things to consider doing if you want to make more money and get better results from your social networking traffic:

Better social networking contacts
Better social networking prospecting

Better Social Networking Contacts

Once again…there are no shortcuts! If your social network is not high quality, you’re not going to get high quality results. As marketers who want to sell things and make money online, so many of us want to ramp things up quickly. We want to build a large network as fast as possible, so we take short cuts.

There are automation tools available for MySpace and Twitter that I’ve seen out there, and let me tell you if you’re using a tool to “automatically” add followers for you on Twitter for example, with the hopes of building your follower count, guess what’s going to happen…you’re going to get a lot of followers most likely! And you’ll feel all warm and toasty inside because you have a ton of followers, and when you tweet out a link to your latest post, guess what happens. Nothing! Know why? Because the network you have built is junk!

It’s understandable to think that you need to have a large network on Facebook or wherever, and truth be told if your network is larger, you’re going to get larger results, but this is only the case if the people in your network actually care about you or what you’re talking about!

Build your network the old-fashioned way, by making personal contact with people you’ve found “out there”. Maybe you’ve come across their blog or seen them in a forum. You’ve talked. You know what business they’re in. They are aware of who you are, and you add them on Facebook. That’s a real contact. That’s a targeted lead. That’s someone you KNOW is interested in what you’re selling. It’s someone you can truly connect with and possibly help in the future. Build your network this way, not through automation, mass following or any other junk-building methods.

Same as what I say about high traffic, large numbers only mean something if there are quality, targeted prospects behind those numbers. Otherwise, it’s just junk. Build a quality network. It’s better to have 500 highly targeted people than 50,000 people who could care less what you have to say and who only added you because they didn’t want to be rude. Yes, this approach takes time, but it doesn’t take MORE time than doing it the fast, crappy way. Because the fast, crappy way doesn’t work. Then you’ll end up having to start over. If you really want to make money online, you might as well do it right from the beginning 🙂

Better Social Networking Prospecting

As business people, bloggers, internet marketers, we don’t often think of ourselves as salespeople, but if we’re selling things online (whether it’s a service, a product or anything), we are salespeople whether we think we are or not! And posting links, tweeting out your latest blog posts, engaging your buyers online to get them over to your site…this is prospecting. We are well-served to think about it this way. If we want to get maximum results, that is.

I will talk more about the power of prospecting and how to prospect in later posts, but for now, I want to simply state how you can get better results from the posts you make on your social networking sites.

First of all, I highly recommend using Ping.fm. It’s pretty well-known at this point, but there are still a lot of people not using it. I’m not sure why. You can post once and have that post hit any number or all of your social networking profiles all at once. You can use it for your blog posts, status updates and more. It’s a massive time saver and a great, simply way to reach more people without any additional effort.

Second, I think it’s important to consider the content of your posts carefully. This is another great example of an area where you can get great results, but most people don’t give it much thought. I believe it’s essential to be deliberate in your approach. If you can get a 1% better response from your status updates, that may not seem like much, but if you multiply that by 500-1000 status updates over the course of a year, it can easily add up to a LOT more traffic to your site, more orders and subscribers, etc. Trust me, 1% adds up!

It’s a common practice to tweet out a link to your latest blog post for example. Keep doing it. It works. It’s a great way to let people know about your newest content. Many people do not subscribe by email or rss. They follow you on Twitter. I was originally surprised when I learned this, but it makes sense. Many people who care about what you’re writing are only going to hear about your new posts this way, so make sure you keep doing it.

But you can get a better result, and a lot more clickthroughs if you are just a little thoughtful about how you post the link. Many people use Tweetlater or some other automated tool in order to automatically tweet out their latest posts. That’s cool. It gets the job done, but you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t use any automated tool for this purpose. People are HYPER-sensitive to automation, and I honestly think they can smell it from a mile away. I don’t want my followers to think I’m not there in person. I want to cultivate that personal connection as much as possible. So I do it manually.

Take your post and think about the main value proposition to your readers. Don’t just tweet out the title and expect people to click over and read it because you’re so awesome and people love you. Give them a REASON to click over and visit your blog. Answer the question honestly, why should your readers visit and read this post now? What problem does this post solve? What real value are you offering them? State this briefly and tweet the link out that way. It takes 3 seconds of thought, and that’s all it takes in most cases to make that extra connection with someone. The details matter!