Niche Money News

When it comes to online business services, did you know that according to our friends at econsultancy.com, social network interaction and blog reading represent the fourth most popular online activities, beating out personal e-mail. 10% of the time that we spend when interacting on the web is spent within social media sites. Search engine giant Bing recently published its top 10 world trends for the year and social media heavyweight newbie Twitter came in second place overall. If this doesn’t show you how important social media is in our collective lives, what will? Just as it is important for you to “be” on Facebook, you must maintain a proactive presence on Twitter as well.

Twitter has been widely referred to as a micro-blog and has really found its own niche. As you know, this medium allows you to send short status messages, and it has really caught on within the business world. It is possible to notify clients about special deals, to handle customer relationship matters and to exhibit a sense of visibility that was previously unheard-of.

A Twitter presence for your online initiative should be more than just a straightforward account. For example, create a dedicated background design and never accept the generic offerings and profile settings offered by Twitter, while also configuring your links correctly and deciding how you are going to build a followers list. There are a number of tools available to you, many based on straightforward keyword research, enabling you to accurately target people who have said they are interested in your niche. This, like Facebook, requires regular maintenance and management for best effect. You should allocate time, ideally again on a daily basis, to create meaningful messages, a.k.a. tweets, and interact with others through direct messages. Note that the vast majority of members, corporate or otherwise, do not meaningfully interact through this medium and are certainly missing out. By making a big effort to set it all up and then committing to management, you can really take advantage of this fabulous new medium.

In the world of Internet marketing, the entire arena has changed quite significantly over the last couple of years. Since the effective arrival of “web 2.0” and the social media revolution, marketing online has become much more of a subtle and thoughtful approach. Great emphasis is now placed on establishing your operation and your name, so that you are viewed as expert and authoritative. It is never advisable to try and hard-sell on Facebook and Twitter or other social media channels, and you should be very careful! In addition to your main sales hub, why not set up a blog to feed into it? By linking between your blog and your main sales hub, even if it means creating a subdomain within your website development to host the blog, you maintain separation while also taking into account potential sales.

Consider your core operation. Education is critical as you expose your products or services to prospects. You may know how great your offerings are and may be convinced that they represent a great bargain for people out there in the real world. It’s your job to brand your organisation as the expert in its field. Create and maintain a well-designed, professionally presented blog. You can use a content management system or website development platform such as WordPress, the leader in this field, as you establish your presence.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Experienced Executive Virtual Assistant who collaborates with businesses and individuals with the sole aim of accomplishing their professional goals. Want to learn more about these comprehensive online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Today!