Social networking may be a new term for a lot of you, but many if not most of you already do it. Think of social networking as you would to the many “networking groups” and “breakfast groups” that many of you already participate in. You know the ones where you meet the last Thursday of the month and trade ideas and offer your services to other group members. Social Networking is the same thing only multiplied by thousands if not millions. The other difference is the fact that you do this online and it can be done on a daily basis if you choose to do so.

When using Social Networking the first thing you’ll notice is that it is much easier to speak to your entire group. If you have anxiety speaking in public, this anxiety will no longer affect you because you now write your message. Keep in mind the anxiety may be gone, but you must provide good, useful content for your group. Another difference with Social Networking is that instead of passing out business cards like you do at the monthly meetings, you can now provide a short paragraph about your self your company and your services with a link to your site. This is usually called your Bio. You should also take advantage of your signature at the end of each post, that will have your name, your contact info and another link to your site. Be careful not oversell in your bio and signature. Keep it short and concise, otherwise some members may view it as spam and totally ignore your postings.

Find a Social Networking Group

Let’s explore how we actually go about participating in a Social Networking group. The first thing you need to do is find a site that will allow you to join and participate in the group. Make sure it’s a public group and not Private. Most groups are always looking for folks to participate, because it creates more content which in turn will create a better ranking in the major search engines. We are going to use MySpace to find a Social Networking Group we can join. If you go to the groups section in MySpace you can type in your keywords and search for groups. In the search results, you will want to primarily look at the membership of each group before selecting the group you want to join.

Keep in mind that there are groups out there that may have 10 or 15 members that actually have 10 or 15 member, but a lot of the groups will create multiple profiles to make it look like there are members. So make sure you pick a group that has at least 40 or more members. The one we are going to select is the Business Buddies of Tampa. The membership is over 500 and once you take a look at the group you can tell there are a lot of different businesses in the group.

So now we have selected our group, the next thing we do is join it. After joining you will want to browse around and read some of the post in the group. You want to find out what other members are posting. If you find a post that asks a question or needs help and you can provide a solution go ahead and do so. In this kind of post, don’t oversell your services, just try to help them and give them an opportunity to click on the link. Let proceed, We have browed around the group’s site and found out what type of posts other members are leaving. Let’s make our first post to the group.

Hello My name is Joe Justin and I wanted to introduce myself. I live in Fort Lauderdale, FL and I work for Arsenal Marketing. We specialize in providing internet marketing services to small and medium size businesses. We can handle the smallest job like web site development or can become your dedicated internet marketing department. If you are looking to jump start your internet marketing efforts visit our site at YourSiteHere

Best Regards,

Joe Justin
Arsenal Marketing
Yoursitehere

Participate Don’t Spam

That’s it! If you provide good content, the users of the group will then submit (bookmark) your posts to different social sites where users of those sites can vote on your content. the more votes you receive, the higher your post will climb on the other social sites. As you can see, after joining a few groups and provide solid content, you can quickly brand yourself as the expert and be seen by groups of potential customers you would not have been able to reach otherwise.

Your next step is to write about four or five different posts that convey the same message. You don’t want to just copy this post and paste it everywhere you can. This will be seen as duplication, so you want to change it up a little. The next thing you must do is actually participate in the groups you join. As previously mentioned, browse the group and find discussions and posts that you can offer advice, not just selling your services. Make sure the advice you offer is solid advice and helpful to not only the person who originally made the post, but try to make it helpful for the group as a whole.

Remember, if one person is asking for help on a specific topic, they are probably not the only one in the group that is having problems it. By providing helpful advice, you will brand yourself as an expert in your field and the group will look to you as their go to guy for this problem and that problem. This will in turn create new customer and new relationship with the members of the group.

Here is a list of Other Social Networking to check out:

Gather

MyWebTop
Affinity Engines
Contact Networks
Econozco (Spanish)
Kickstart Connect

If you would like a list of the actual web addresses for the above site, you can visit Arsenal Marketing's web site. The information provided is just the tip of the iceberg for the social networking part of WEB 2.0 Internet Marketing arsenal. There is so much more you can do with WEB 2.0 Marketing strategies and techniques. Be on the look out for more articles by Joe Justin of Arsenal Marketing.

Joe Justin has over 15 years programming/web development and marketing experience. He is currently the founder of Arsenal Marketing WEB 2.0 Intnernet Marketing for business. Arsenal marketing specializes in providing internet marketing services to small and medium size businesses. Arsenal Marketing can handle the smallest job like web site development or can become your dedicated internet marketing department. If you want to learn more about WEB 2.0 Marketing for you business please visit: http://www.arsenalmarketing.com

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