As you may remember in our previous post, Social Networking for Business (Part 2/3), we talked about the myths of social networking, spamming, and the differences between a personal relationship and a business contact.

In this post we shall discuss and give a few suggestions, pointers as to how you can publicize your business through a social networking forum to add value to your work. The foremost thing to do after signing up for a forum/site to enhance your work is to let people know you exist.

There is a need for you to generate adequate traffic to your community, blog or website so that your target audience and the potential target audience may know what you have to offer. The following ideas will help in achieving this goal.

1 – Send an Introduction Email

It is always a good idea to send a letter of introduction to your contacts and connections letting them know why you are there and what do you are offering. This cannot only be done with professional contacts but the same can be sent to friends and family. Whenever you send this email to your audience be sure to outline the benefits to them for reading it and point out that they can subscribe to your community, blog via email and RSS feed. Also, be sure to ask them to share it with their friends and families and anyone who can benefit from it.

2 – Social Media

Try participating in multiple social networks. If you are on facebook for example you could also use it to market your email marketing services. It’s important to present yourself in a friendly yet professional manner, although social networking allows you to be a lot more casual than you should be on your website and blog, which tends to make people feel more comfortable and create trust. Also, use Facebook to place direct links to your site and blog. Some professional networking sites such as Linkedin and Ecademy provides greater opportunities to connect to like minded people and present yourself for creating and enhancing your business opportunities.

3 – Forums

Contribute to forums. Visit forums and online communities where the topic of your most recent blog or your field of discussion is under-discussion, and where it’s appropriate, add your own comments. Just make sure that whatever you contribute is of value. Don’t just drop in and make some inane comment just to get your name out there.

4 – Newsletter

Include information about your community, website and blog in the newsletter you send to subscribers. You could also create a display advertisement that readers could click on to get to your website and/or blog.

5 – Signature

Create a signature file with a link to your website, community and blog and include it with every email you send.

6 – Article Directory

Write a series of articles and submit them to the top article directories. This is an excellent way to become known as an expert in your field. Articles need to be good quality, informative and approximately 400-700 words in length. Be sure to include a brief one or two sentence paragraph about you with a link to your site or blog at the end, and if the article directory will allow it, include one or two relevant links in the body of the article.

7 – Sharing Useful Information

It is always helpful to share useful business site with your contact and clients. This would help in deriving traffic to your site. Also, uploading important and useful articles proves to be a good technique for sharing information and increasing knowledge base. Cross referencing information at different forums can help you gain attention and bring in more business.

These links provide a crash course in networking – also an overview of their services – the sits is of XING. It gives a detailed overview of their services and all the reasons you should be on their site which provides good guidelines for a starter.

http://www.xing.com/app/help?op=start;tab=tour;page=start#dbnLayerContent

http://www.xing.com/app/help?op=start;tab=tour

The following links provide a detailed list for more social networking sites also social networking articles:

http://www.about.com/lr/social-networking

http://personalweb.about.com/lr/social_networking_sites/239633/2/

Don’t forget to visit our facebook pages – your valued opinions and participation would help us provide better services to you:-

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Indianapolis-IN/Halogen-Designs/187397613340

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Peoples-Burn-Foundation/141716824133