Social Networking within your niche is a good thing. But, to travel outside of your niche and network is even better! When you take a look at who your customers are, you will have a better idea of what you need to tell them and how to go about doing that. Social networking can be time consuming, but what isn't when you sell online? It is very beneficial, how can you afford not to. Signing on to one or more of these networking sites will not only allow you to meet and get to know your customers, but it can cover marketing and advertising too and all at no cost to you.
A few of the popular sites to network socially are MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Multiply.com, Stumbleupon.com, and Squidoo.com.
Most of us have heard about MySpace and Facebook by now. You set up your own page (site) and find your friends. You can join groups and meet new people, sell there (for a fee), post a blog, post pictures and interact with different add ons to your page. Both are easy to learn and set up. Multiply is right along with these two. You get your own site, set it up how you like, meet people by joining groups, post a blog, add pictures, etc. You can set up your account to receive email alerts when there are updates to your friends pages or blogs and can keep up with things this way instead of checking your account everyday. (A time saver!)
StumbleUpon gives you a page (site) that you can customize to suit your interests. When you sign up here, you get a button and toolbar for your browser, you set up your account with your interests. The interests cover just about everything. Stumble Upon will also help you meet people who share the same interests as you, which is nice. Other Stumblers can check out your interests and pages you've stumbled. You can Stumble your own site here yourself or wait and see if another Stumbler does it for you (this could take a while).
Squidoo is a site that allows you to create a lens. You can make as many lenses as you want. Each lens is a chance to showcase you as an expert on a certain topic. Each day, your lens is ranked along with all of the other lenses. You can see your stats page and see if anyone has visited your lens. There are groups you can join too. You can creatively point your lens to your website or blog. Plenty of help and suggestions can be found on this site as well.
I've given five sites for beginning your social network plunge. It will take time to set up and familiarize yourself with these sites, so take it slow. One at a time. Have you found any other great social networking sites we can try?
2 comments:
Hi Kelly,
Just doing some catching up and found this blog post. One social network I've found to be really helpful to me is www.ning.com. This is the host for Indiepublic, which I think is a really great social networking site for independent artists and crafters - maybe not so much for selling, but for collaborating and getting ideas and support. From there, I've joined "Considerations: The Art In Marketing," and the "Home Based Business Network," both also on ning.
You are right to take a look at who your customers are and get into the social networking sites they're in. One of my niche customers, believe it or not, is real estate brokers and agents. So my focus this month is to get involved in their online social networks.
Pam,
Ning.com is a great place to network. They have groups for everything and you are able to build your own social network there. Indiepublic is also wonderful to connect with like minded crafters.
We share these networks too!
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