They Call It Social Networking for a Reason

We’ve talked quite a bit about the power of social networking as part of your business marketing strategy, but for those of you who simply can’t invest the modest amount of time to stay involved in updating your profile; social networking accounts can have a downside.

There are plenty of different social networking sites available to promote your services, but it’s important that you don’t create more work that you and your staff are capable of handling by signing up for too many sites to keep regularly updated.  In order for social networking to be a successful part of your internet marketing strategy, you’ve not only got to keep each one of your accounts updated regularly but you’ve got to make yourself available to prospective clients and customers that want to interact with you over those networks.

Standard daily updates, even those made once a week via a scheduler, consisting of special events, promotional offers and regular sales are fine, but you need to be mindful of any attempts of direct communication from current or prospective customers.  Your friends and followers have become your friends and followers to have a direct link to your business and that can put you in a very powerful position, but if you fail to follow through on the “social” part of social networking, you could be doing much more harm then good.

You expect good service from the restaurants, salons and all of the other brick and mortar stores that you patronize and being ignored is certainly something that would drive you from a store that you visited to a competitor – why would it be any different for a customer of yours who was trying to get service from you via your social networking account.

Twitter, Facebook and MySpace can all be powerful parts of your internet marketing strategy, but just like blogging, SEO and your website design – it must be done properly if you want to reap the rewards.