Promoting and marketing your social network presence
Maintaining a social networking presence is only useful if people know about you and are able to find you on the site. Promoting your presence is very important when your profile is first created.
You can do this by telling people in your networks, placing the address on your website, and letting people know that is another way to contact you.
Also adding friends is great as it opens up your audience. Once you have a presence on the site you will experience a snowball effect as more people add you and their friends will see they have added you - this may lead them to add you as well.
Some ideas:
- use existing channels to tell people about your new site eg. Website, newsletter
- if you have an email list send an email to your network informing them about your new profile
- make sure your username is spelt exactly how it is in real life so that you are searchable, if spaces are not allowed then the usual convention is to replace a space with an underscore (_) eg. Summerland_Golf_Club.
- update your profile regularly so people have a reason to visit your profile more than once
Further resources:
Social Media Daily
Free downloadable guide on how to market your profile and increase its presence on the web.
http://www.socialmediadaily.com
Eight Secrets of Effective Online Networking
Tips and tricks for using and managing your social networks wisely.
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page8075.cfm
The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook
Well worth reading if you have created a Facebook page.
http://www.insidefacebook.com/facebook-marketing-bible
Seven virtual world marketing tactics and metrics to follow
Virtual world marketing tips.
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629409