Promoting Your Business Through Social Networking

Social networking is a very important part of many people's lives nowadays. MySpace is the third most popular website in the United States, and hi5 is the number one website in Portugal, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. People do not realize that many of the sites they visit are social networking websites; for example, YouTube is a social networking site, in that people can make accounts and share videos with each other. Digg allows users to share interesting content with each other, and Wordpress is basically a social networking site for bloggers. There are social networking sites of every kind, in fact, there are social networking programs. Bearshare, for example, is an application that allows users to share files with each other. Originally, only MySpace and Facebook were thought of as real social networking sites, but now that is changing. People want to be in contact with each other, and because that desire is in such demand, the Internet is adapting.

So now you know what the social networking sites are, but how do you promote your business through them? The thing about promotion through social networking is that it takes time, and it is not a quick way of advertising (that is, until you actually make your move). It takes a lot of time building up friends and contacts, as well as establishing trust, before you can actually start advertising your product. The trick is to do it little by little. Join a few popular social networking sites, and start making friends. Do this my adding your real friends, and then adding their friends. Just make friends with your friends' friends and your list will grow exponentially. Constantly add content to your profile so people want to come look at your page, and eventually you will start getting friend requests (instead of having to make them all yourself). Once you have a high number of friends, send out a bulletin (a message to all your friends) describing your product in a friendly and light tone. Add a degree informalism to make the atmosphere more comfortable, and spend time constructing your copy. This is where it all pays off, so take your time.

Sound like a lot of work? No problem; like anything in business, money can buy you a solution. There are thousands of people out there selling MySpace bulletins. You pay them a few dollars, and they send out a message about your business (a message you write) to all their friends. It is easy to find a person with 20,000 friends who is selling bulletins for only $5 a piece. The downside, of course, is that this person probably sends so many advertising bulletins that his/her friends are most likely impervious to bulletin advertisements. That is why you have to buy bulletins from not one person, but many people, to increase effectiveness. Also, spend time trying to find a first-time seller, because then the response to your ad will be huge. While purchasing bulletin ads can help your business, it is much, much more effective to do it yourself (or pay someone to build a friend-filled MySpace account for you).