George Brown SEO Expert

Link: http://www.all-about-training.com

So, if you have a small business, or even a not so small business, and you keep hearing that you should be using Social Network Marketing, or Web 2.0., I conduct live seminars on thise subjects. I hear all the time that people are being told to do these things to help improve their businesses. People tell me that when they go on the Internet, and want to do some basic research on a topic like, "how to use social network marketing to help a small businesses?", they get 187,000+ search results that offer a great way for you to never have to work again, and yet, make a million in only an hour a day.

When you do search in Amazon, or at your local Boarders, you get about the same results. So, I decided to add this article to my blog, to offer a little advice, and a real world example.

Here are the basics of how it should work! The new Web 2.0 is supposed to be a great network of people who want to promote “cool stuff”. When this all started it was supposed to be a great idea that was pretty cool. An example would be "Craigslist", which started in 1995 as an e-mail list of San Francisco lists of events. Now it has 20 billion pages viewed each month, with over 50 million visitors. See, people helping people.

FaceBook was created for college buddies to "keep in touch". It was based around a college frat, or sorority, “face book”.

Heck, even Google itself was created as a way to work between students and teachers in college, but it grew into the mega-juggernaut almighty-Google.

So, how are all these networks, which did not start out to be marketing juggernauts, effect your small business? How can you use these networks to help you build a social network?

I recently had one of my students tell me she joined twitter, but she could not quite remember how to build a network of friends and followers that had a common interest. So, she came into the workshop telling me I was crazy, because Twitter was bunk. And that as soon as she joined, all she had following her, waere porn stars. The attendees got quite a laugh when we asked what she had been doing searches for when she first joined. But the truth is, unless you do focus your friends and followers, you can very quickly have a network which you would not want to be a member of. So, let me give you the background where twitter came from. See, a lot of big corporations started blocking IM applications, and started blocking all kinds of IM and messaging apps as, you well know. Well, as soon as someone builds a better mouse trap, the mice find a way around it. So enter, twitter, a small blog that used small 140 character blog style web postings. The basic idea was, if you and I were friends, I would follow you, and you would follow me, and at 10am today we both open our home page, and say “Hi”, then all day long, we could chat, 140 characters long or less.

So, how did this turn into a marketing juggernaut? Well, like so many other networks, they found people who needed a service, and met it. So, how do you use it? Well, the text book would say that you have a great product, get people who use your product to tell others just how cool your product is.

Now there is another level, which is to build a network of people who have an open mind. If you were to place a blog, let’s say, on your site, and you issued a press release, then your followers should be tooting your horn, and telling their friends and followers about your really cool press release, and so on.

So, how do you ride that fine line between advertising, and finding a network who will toot your horn for you?

Well, let’s try this out to show how this could work by building a network in twitter, find a few hundred followers, and use the bunch of tools on-line to help you build a network. The basic is at the bottom of the twitter page, you may conduct a search, type in whatever topic would match your product or service, then start to follow people listed. As you are listed to follow others, they will often follow you. Post interesting information, not “come buy my product”, and start to list real information. As said, content is king. Build a network.

You should also join many other networks, like facebook, and linkedin, and put cross links to each other. This can seem like a full time job, so you should create a routine so that you are not overwhelmed.

Yet another important part is to add a blog to your current site. This does not mean that the blog is your site, just in a directory like/blog this will come in handle on almost all the networks.

Once you start posting information on your blog, and working with your networks, you will want to try and get your story on the front page of such sites as Digg. This article is an example. To see how this works, I am hoping that you are reading this after you found it on Digg, and that it helps it go to the front page of my Twitter network. These are the very basic general topics of Social Network Marketing, which should be used with your search engine optimization to build a general overall web 2.0 marketing campaign.

To help small businesses learn how to create a Web 2.0 marketing campaign using social networks, you can attend one of 5 upcoming live workshops in Chicago, starting July 8th, New York July 22nd, New Orleans Aug 5th, Las Vegas Aug 26th, and Vancouver Sept 9th.

These Social Network marketing workshops have been added to a 20 city tour of 2 day seminars on the topic of search engine optimization. You may find more information about the SEO Workshops at http://www.all-about-training.com

Or call 888-411-7858