Working the Social Networks

Yesterday I worked with my sister to work on promoting her ebook using the online marketing strategies that are getting a lot of buzz these days - the social networks.
Preparation - information you will need

Your profile name
profile email address
small profile picture
150 word intro paragraph
set of best 5 keyword phrases
website address you are marketing

Purpose - why are you doing all this?

Ultimately, all the social attention should gain you new visitors to your main website, new email subscribers and new customers.

You achieve this by establishing a relationship with people who are already in your niche - and by building a means to communicate with them in the future.

Day One

Step One - Register Everywhere

Now you can find WoWGrrl on your favorite social networking sites! And add her as a friend! We started our social networking journey at www.profilactic.com.  It was easier to tackle the project when two of us split the list of sites that are supported, and started registering a new profile on every social bookmarking, file sharing, video sharing, Web 2.0 sites we could find.

As we went through this list of almost 200 Web 2.0 style sites, there were a few that stood out - these were ear-marked for another visit and more development.

These exceptional information sharing sites also included a way to build a friends list and create groups on your topic.

Step Two - Aggregate the Feeds

Another social networking service I found were a few rss feed aggregation sites.  After creating almost 200 new profiles across the full range of social networking sites, it seems impossible to monitor and manage everything.

List all of the sites you have registered with with services like profilactic.com, blogcatalog.com, superglu.com and pownce.com - the beta toluu.com my also be of interest.

Day Two

Step Three - Get Connected
within each community site, join groups, search on your topic to build your friends lists.

Update your profiles - before you start adding friends, be sure to upload a profile image, copy and paste a description the includes a link to your site or offer…etc.

Step Four -
Create a unique ‘Group’ on a theme relating to your topic, update the Group Profile page to include links to your offers then invite your new friends to join your group.

One Week Later

Community Building

A simple and effective way to bring people to your group - a fun contest on pictures and videos.  These simple contests give reasons for members to invite their friends to the group.

One Month Later

Community Partnerships

After your friends list and group membership has grown to a few hundred people, you can start making promotional swaps with other group owners. i.e. I’ll send out a notice about your group to my members if you’ll send out a notice about my group to your members…

Now your groups can start growing to be in the thousands!