As I’ve gotten more and more familiar with social networking and online marketing, and as I’ve helped more of my clients use it to market their own business, I often hear over and over the same frustrations with it.

“I know I’m supposed to be online, or on Twitter or on Facebook. So I set up my profile, but I’m just not getting how it’s supposed to get me business.”

“I see people being successful marketing their business online, but I’m confused on what to do. How come I can’t make it work for me?”

People will try to copy what they see someone else doing on these sites, but they don’t see the whole picture. So they end up missing steps at the end, or in the middle, or the beginning. And then obviously they’re not going to see the results they were expecting or hoping for.  So here’s 6 simple steps you can use to get started the right way with social media.

Step 1 – Understanding who your ideal client is, knowing where to find them, and figuring out what their problem is that you can solve. Then figuring out how you can peak their interest, build a relationship with them, and become known as a resource to them using online marketing/social media strategies.  Finally, getting very clear on exactly what social media is all about. It’s not about selling, selling, selling. It’s about making connections, working on relationships, connecting with potential clients and eventually getting those prospects back to your hub (your blog). Which brings us to…

Step 2 – Setting up your blog. I am always pushing this issue on my clients and the people I talk to about online marketing. I view your blog as the foundation, the hub, of all of your online marketing efforts. A blog serves so many purposes. It’s a place where you can show your expertise, offer free information, peak prospect’s interest in the service or product you provide. Your blog is also where you can continue to connect with your target market, adding widgets, plugins, badges etc. to connect them to even more of your social media profiles. The whole format of a blog increases your search engine possibilities. And your blog is where you will capture your prospects’ information so you have more than one chance to sell to them.

Step 3 – Set up your social media profiles correctly. You want to fill them out completely. Use the plugins and apps available on different sites to incorporate your different sites and your blog, and to maximize your time by only having to post in one place vs. having to post to multiple sites.

Step 4 – Start connecting. Join groups that share your interests or that are of interest to your ideal client or customer. Find people to follow that you admire and can learn from. See what they’re doing that works and then try it out to see if it works for you. But don’t be afraid to think outside of the box and try something completely different. Do pay attention to the etiquette of each particular site, because you certainly don’t want to irritate anyone. Start building relationships with mentors, prospects, peers – the whole time directing them back to your website where you can continue building on the connection you started developing on the social media site.  As you get out on these sites, you’ll find people trying to sell you on the newest trick or tip to get the most followers or friends. But honestly, you want to focus on developing quality connections with people, not focusing on the quantity.

And you have to remember that your ultimate goal is to get people back to your blog, get their contact information, and continue to build up the “know, like, trust” factor with them, until you convert them to a client or customer.

Step 5 – Slowly start adding other online marketing techniques. Don’t try to add everything in at once, because you’ll just get overwhelmed and give up. But once you have the top sites (I recommend Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube), you can start pulling in some other online marketing strategies to ramp up your website traffic even more. Things like article marketing, squidoo, bookmarking sites, forums, teleseminars, just to name a few. Social media isn’t the end all to making millions of dollars a year. It is a great free (money wise, but definitely not free time wise) way to get new business, if done correctly, but it’s not all you should be doing.

Balance it out with some other techniques, be consistent, and follow up with your prospects – and you will see results. You’ll start to see more traffic to your website, which will lead to getting more emails, which will lead to more clients, which of course leads to a bigger business and more money.

Step 6 – Convert those prospects into clients. You can have the hugest list in the world, you can have thousands of emails. But if you don’t do something with those, if you don’t follow up, that won’t mean a thing. This is the final step of online marketing, and without this step, all of your efforts in the 5 steps before won’t mean a thing. Yeah, sure, you’ll get those few people who will sign up with you right away, or buy your product after tweeting with you a few times. But that’s really the exception, and not the rule. The majority of people aren’t going to purchase anything from you until they (what? you know the answer) “know, like, and trust” you. And you build this up with follow-up and interaction with your list. So you have to follow-up, you have to do what you say you will, you have to offer information and resources.

If you want to get more detail on each of these steps, and find out how you can use online marketing to increase your business and make more money – attend my free webinar on February 19th. Click here to sign up.

Tagged as: Increasing business, online marketing, Social media