Which Social Media should you use?

Everyone knows that Social Media is the future of Marketing, especially for a home based business. The Big Corporations are using them, most network marketers are on it and so must you. I suppose anybody with access to the Internet is using social media, and mostly for socialising. And whether they realise it or not, they are using the most effective marketing method ever available to mankind. It’s free, it’s viral and it will spread like wildfire in a matter of minutes. In my opinion, you will simply lose big time if you’re not leveraging on the Social Media Network to earn some money in this new age of technology.

So you would be looking to create some handsome income over the internet and a Home Based Business is the obvious choice. The next question is, how do you start marketing? The best way of course is to use Social Networking through the many Social Media available on the Internet. Registering and to start using them is very easy. If you are totally a beginner, my advice is Just Do It and you’ll find it becoming less and less alien to you and you’ll start enjoying it in no time. As for someone who is already using Social Media, perhaps to market their home based business, I’m sure you would be glad to know that there are some program that can integrate all the Social Media Network, so you just need to update 1 or 2 and all the others will be automatically updated at the same time!

Here are the some of the Social Media Network that I’m currently using for socialising and marketing (Just click the logo to visit the site to register or to find out more) :

Let’s face it. You are not on Social Media if you’re not on Facebook. As of July 2010, Facebook active users have reached 500 million people! That’s ‘active’ mind you, the kind that log in almost daily. If Facebook is a country, it’ll be the 3rd largest country in the world! You are downright insane for not using it for marketing! Register, find your friends and add your friends’ friends. For home based marketers, please create a Facebook Page for your business. Just click here. Give the page a good commercial name relevant to your home based business. For all you know, this page will be your first and most important step towards ‘Branding Yourself’. Welcome to the world of ‘You Inc’. I’ll write in detail about Facebook in my next blog.

Twitter – Another ‘You-are-insane-if-you’re-not-using-this’ network. Twitter’s growth is exploding. Almost everyone has a twitter account and is actively using it. Its method of socialising through microblogging (less than 140 characters), ability to follow people and have followers, make it a very convenient media to use. It is a very efficient tool for marketers. A simple search of profile through the system and you’ll be able to find like-minded people to connect to. Imagine you’re someone who is working from home, you just need to click ‘find people’, type in ‘work at home’ or ‘home based’ and immediately you’ll get the list of people who are like you. From here, just click to follow them and hopefully they’ll follow you back. Anytime you ‘tweet’, it’ll be seen by all these people. Very Important – Please put in a good image and write a good profile of yourself so people will notice you and will be able to ‘find’ you.

Blogger – A blog is the source of your Social Media Feed. Simply put, you write on your blog and this writing will feed all your social media networks. You must update your blog regularly with interesting writing. The best would be something that provide solution or add value to other people. For a home based business owner, there are many things you can write on, especially about marketing. Do some research before writing to make sure that you’ll get it right.

IMPORTANT TIPS: Your blog, Facebook and Twitter are your Marketing Core. Put your Facebook & Twitter profile on your blog (like what you see on my blog now). Use NetworkedBlogs to automatically share your blog on Facebook and also Twitter. And place a ‘ShareThis’ link to make it easier for you to post the blog to your other social media network and also for your reader ease of sharing.

MySpace – Use MySpace to market to the younger generations. If you know the tricks of the trade – using songs, images, videos, games, then you will make it with MySpace. Mind you, MySpace users are about 250 million people, so the potential is huge. As like Facebook, MySpace will provide similar marketing benefits if you can make it work for your business.

Google Buzz – This is something like Twitter. Only that on Google Buzz, you can have images, and Google Buzz is built right into Gmail, so it’s very easy to use. You can follow people and have followers and you can chat online. It is a very powerful method of marketing once you get the hang of it.

LinkedIn - LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 70 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals. The most important aspect of LinkedIn is, you’ll have a network of serious business people. And spammers or ‘get-rich-quick’ kind of people are unlikely.

Digg - A listing on the homepage of Digg will allow you to reach thousands of users. Digg users are also highly influential on other social media platforms such as Blogs, Forums, and Twitter. Reaching this audience should be a key objective if you hope to build a successful word-of-mouth marketing campaign.

Delicious - Delicious bookmarks are an easy and effective way to promote your business. It can be used to share valuable information and insight, while at the same time establishing yourself as a resource in your field and building your brand. Setting up an account is fairly simple. Be sure to use an effective username, like your name as one word in lower case, or the name of your business.

Bebo – Use Bebo as a means of engaging fans, spreading the word and just plain entertaining people. The most common and simplest way to market on Bebo is to create a profile page for your product or brand. The principle of success remains the same - The most successful profile pages on Bebo must provide solution or adding value to other people. Free Gifts, contests, fun games or useful widgets are sure ways to get more people to engage with you.

StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon is a social website which allows its users a new way to experience the Internet. Instead of searching for specific items on search engines like Google, StumbleUpon users only have to tag specific personal or professional interests and then ‘channel surf’ the web by simply clicking on a button on StumbleUpon tool bar. You need to have other Stumble friends and create a good profile, broad within your categories and take the time to review the sites you stumble upon. For all you know, you will begin to generate a large volume of traffic to your site consists of like-minded people who are genuinely interested in the content you write and/or the products you sell.

FriendFeed - FriendFeed is a social network ‘Driver’. It can take all of the feeds from dozens of social networking, bookmarking, news, and video sites plus feeds from websites and blogs, which you specify – and “stream” them into one really cool place. Not only that, but you can organize these feeds into smaller groups of interest, all in one place. Another big thing is that your FriendFeed feed becomes its own feed that others can subscribe to. So, rather than having a profile like so many other social sites, FriendFeed has your publicly shared RSS and other social stuff gathered in one place.

Tumblr – It’s a blog. Or a ‘light blog’ if I may call it since it is so easy to use. Tumblr makes it easier to aggregate content like news articles and videos. Like Twitter, you can also “follow” a tumbleblog you like, this is called ‘re-blog’. Users can also hit a “like” button or reblog the post onto their own Tumblr page, making the blog items more viral.

So there you have it. The 12 Social Media network that I’m currently using.

But how to manage all these networks? Not to worry. As I mentioned above, the program that will make your life easier by managing most of these is Ping.fm It’s a simple and free service that makes updating your social networks a snap! If you are using any social network that is not managed by Ping.fm, you can simply use the ‘Share This’ button I mentioned above.

So when you have all the above in place, the next more important thing you should do is to spend time socializing. You want more people to know you so they will pay attention to you. And how do you do this? Remember the principle - Post something that will provide solution or add value to people’s lives. Do this and you will be successful in your Social Media Marketing.

Connect with me at my Facebook Fan page:

http://www.facebook.com/8weekstofinancialfreedom

Yours in Success!

Sheriman

p.s. I haven’t launch my home based business yet, so just please be a Fan and stay tuned!