Social Media Marketing Mistake

Most business owners are interested in the marketing benefits of using social media but become quickly confused because they are trying to build friends, create fan pages, set up Twitter accounts, set up LinkedIn profiles, etc. Are you beginning to see the mistake here?

The business owner (interested in marketing) has begun a social media networking initiative and NOT a social media marketing initiative… They have been confused and have set down the wrong path from the start!

One of the biggest mistakes that Internet marketers make is believing that they can launch a social media marketing initiative inside of social media networking environments (like Facebbook, Twitter, etc.)

Social media marketing and social media networking are two VERY different initiatives. If you try to do one inside the other you are bound for disaster. Much like mixing baking soda and vinegar together with explosive results.

There is a clear and distinct order in which you engage social media for business benefit. If you try the networking bit before the marketing bit then you are not operating at maximum efficiency.

Most people have it wrong. They network with people in an attempt to build their business (prospecting)… This is the most inefficient way to use social media and a great waste of time and energy. Not to mention it is hard to track results… It’s not completely measureable!

Here’s how I do it…

Step 1: Create a social media marketing campaign that stems from every blog post I create.

Step 2: Network with the prospects that I receive from the social media marketing campaign

I don’t network with people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I would rather network with people on my blog and people that I pull into my private network as a result of my social media marketing initiatives. I only need to network in one place, not many.

I only network with prospects. Most make the mistake of trying to network with everyone in an attempt to pull in prospects…

… This is backwards… They social media network in an effort to begin a social media marketing campaign… Do you see the problem here?

How do you create a social media marketing campaign?

Here’s how I do it…

  1. Publish a new blog post.
  2. Syndicate the post to 2 or 3 social news sites with large market share (many eyeballs).
  3. Increase the visibility of the syndications by garnering comments, votes and shares on each network where I syndicate my blog post. (I use a tool called Synnd for this function)

As content gains votes and comments it becomes more visible to a larger and larger audience.

In approximately a few hours I will start to see:

  1. An almost immediate increase in traffic to my new blog post
  2. The blog post has been indexed by Google and ranked higher than usual (usual being if I did not syndicate my blog post to social networks)
  3. A steady increase in traffic as the visibility of my content is increased through social voting and commenting.
  4. A steady (and automatic) spread of my content from the original networks I syndicated to other networks as other people spread my content through bookmarks, inbound links from blog posts, mentions in forums, etc.
  5. A steady and increasing amount targeted traffic arriving at my blog post.
  6. A steady and increasing amount of people who opt-in or download my free report (they are now in my sales funnel)… PROSPECTS!

All of this is measureable and I have a clear and definitive ROI (Return On Investment) … My investment (in the case of this blog post) was 30 minutes writing, 2 minutes syndicating (using the tool Synnd) and no time is spent in increasing the visibility of my content becuase the Synnd network handles it for me. No time spent spreading my content becuase I made sure it was eduacational, enlightening and/or entertaining so it will spread from network to network automatically because people find it interesting.

So in total I spent 32 minutes on “Social Media Marketing” this blog post. This blog post will draw traffic, action (opt-ins, rss subscribers, report downloaders) and sales. All measuerable, all repeatable.

The last blog post that I social media marketed has pulled in over $10,000 in revenue from about 1 hour of work. What is the ROI on that? I’ve been so busy handling new business from that post that I am just now getting around to writing this new post.

After I begin pulling in prospects then (and only then) will I begin social media networking. I start networking with prospects… I DO NOT network to gain prospects, I only network with prospects I have gained through social media marketing and I network with them through my personal or corporate blog, email or in my private network.

Does this make sense?

I welcome your comments, this is a very important subject and lies at the heart of most everyone’s confusion in regard to social media for business purposes.

- Charles Heflin

P.S. If you want to know more about the tool Synnd then hop over to SocialMediaScience.com

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