Can You Really Make Money With Social Media?

Are you using social media in your business? Not are you using Facebook, or Twitter and going on there while you're at work and playing games or making random posts.

The question is: are you using social media to build your business and to increase your profits?

You absolutely can make money with these platforms and you should if you're a small business owner or entrepreneur.

You want to think of social networks like you do the other types of media you use in your marketing. You have direct mail, television, radio, internet, and other media outlets you should be using in your marketing.

Why would you think you can't use these media outlets to market your business, and profit from it?

One important thing you want to remember, in using Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or any media in your marketing, it requires you to be strategic.

You can't just put your name and your logo up on the social networking sites and expect something to happen. Unlike other marketing venues you might be using that cost you hard dollars, your biggest investment in using social media in your marketing is your time.

You need to make posts on the social media platforms you've chosen to use. But you can't just post any old thing. You have to make posts that are pertinent to your business.

For example, maybe you have the answer to a question people frequently ask you in business. So post that question, attach the link to your website or to your squeeze page for "The Number One Way To Solve... " or "The Number One Secret To... " or "The Number One Reason For... " whatever the answer to the question is. The key is to make sure your answer and the content you provide is worth the prospect giving you their name and email address.

One of the strategies for using social media is to build your prospect list. One of the ways you do this is by offering people some great content in exchange for their name and email address. That way, you can contact them in the future and market to them so they stay aware of all your offerings.

Here's a critical thing to remember - whatever you do has to be measureable.

One of the easiest ways to make your social media measureable is to simply have different links in your data management system for each social networking site you're marketing on. You don't necessarily have to have different pages, just different URLs. So when your clients come to your site, leave their name and email address, they're tagged as having come from whichever social media site they came from.

Now, you can measure. Because now each time that client makes a purchase, you know if they came to you from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or whichever networking site you're using.

So stop wasting your time on your social media sites and start making the time you invest in social media pay dividends.

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