In the business of network marketing, social media popularity is not about shallow fame or flimsy recognition, but of reputation building, creating a name for yourself, your brand and your company, which will carry on throughout the entire lifetime of your business. Your reputation will live forever in the web.
A point to remember is that you are called to conduct yourself to a global audience over and over again as a professional, an expert in your field and also as a genuine and authentic individual. All three will, at all times, need to interplay as you socialize.
As a global network marketer, your purpose is to build a long-term presence of likability and attractiveness, so that you amass, not only an influential group of followers who can extend your reach for you far and wide into the worldwide market, but also a membership base of loyal supporters who will want to stay with you, build your business with you, and give you their respect and trust, for better or for worse.Reputations are hard to build and are quickly damaged. One dissatisfied customer may be enough to fuel the fire and mess up what you’ve built. When you have people who are committed to support you, you’ve put together the very cornerstone for reputation management that will go a long way. People loyal to you are highly likely to disbelieve a bad publicity if you have a convincing track record of expertise, professionalism and authenticity backing you up. An outstanding reputation speaks so profoundly for you as people will want to do business with you if they like you and they trust you, and, when it necessitates, they will look back and give you that second chance when the time comes that you need it.
How do you carry yourself so that you build a lifelong reputation of authority and authenticity? The key to social networking is to work together. Take into account that you are interrelating with people, who are, like you, professionals, experts in their own field, and also genuine and authentic individuals. Logically, as you would want to be treated they would want to be treated the same way.
There are basic rules to play by in social network marketing.
GIVE SOME COMMON GROUND TO BUILD ON
Your profile is the very first thing people will look over as they study all about you. Put on view your complete personal and professional background information along with professional recommendations. Visuals contribute very much to an online first impression so a nice-looking photo is a good idea.
BUILD A CONNECTION
Get just a bit personal. They’re not that into you yet, you only have your work as common ground. Mention an interesting point in their profile or blog content and then build on that. Promote them, their content, their product, their work throughout other social networks and they will likely return the favor and do the same for you.
BE WANTED
Don’t be the unwelcome, unwanted, uninvited visitor, so don’t sell. When you blatantly sell anything to people it’s calle
d in-your-face selling. In the real world, it’s similar to a sales person harassing you, shoving a product in front of your face and carrying on his sales spiel even if you’ve repeatedly asked him to shut up already. It’s out-and-out rude and distasteful. Social media is not a platform to shout about your product, it’s there for you to use to interact with potential customers with the intention of establishing authority and trust so that you earn the right to do business with them. As an alternative to selling, share content or a link to a blog that may be valuable to them. Until they recognize and trust that you are truly helping them out and you need their help in return, all of the business talk will be deemed as spam and trash.
REACH OUT
Reaching out involves stirring up conversations to build awareness of you. Get on the right side of people in the community you’re interacting in. A large community means they’ve been together for awhile, so there are by now well-known personalities, languages and practices that you need to break into. If you’re starting your own community, you’ll need to create awareness and instigate conversation from the ground up. If you own the community, you have the freedom to promote and advertise to your target market. When you have a blog, spread out into the blogosphere and reach out to other blogs by holding relevant conversations with them, get them to blog about your issue, drop links with target text attached if your purpose is to drive traffic to your product or website. Be well-mannered, identify yourself, and be informed about your subject matter.
ADAPT
Every social networking site has a culture of it’s own. What might be considered appropriate for Facebook might be regarded as spam in LinkedIn. A particular style of writing might be satisfactory in FriendFeed but may be unsuccessful in Twitter. Adapting your strategy to each social media site guarantees that:
1). you’re not sending out identical messages across sites,
2). your message is relevant for each respective site and will therefore distribute effectively.
CONVERSE INTELLIGENTLY
You’re working with professionals with whom you want to gain a level of trust with, so don’t blatantly self-promote, don’t misuse social networking for SEO or marketing purposes only. If you’re in a forum or blog, get into the discussion and exchange ideas expertly. Leave enough comment to stimulate discussion. Leave appropriate links to your resources in your signature. Don’t post off-topic subjects, or one-liners that barely say you agree or disagree and then paste 5 links to go with it. High-quality posts bring about the interaction and attention you intend to attract.
KEEP IN TOUCH
Be consistent. The only way to build a reputation is when users in the community know you. The only way for the community to know you is if you spend a lot of time online interacting with them.
MEET UP
Take the socializing offline and meet up face to face. Arrange for your group of supporters to join up in a local area to further advocate your call for action and reinforce your associations.
Bottom line: Just treat people right. What works offline in terms of propriety, truly works online too. If your reputation sucks, though you have a superior product, or are affiliated with a billion dollar company, none of it matters. Keep in mind, social networking is powerful in distributing communication between businesses and customers. In time, people will know about your substandard customer relations and unpleasant business practices.
