Archives for January 2009

Have you been hearing all the hype
on Social Media Marketing?

Is it really going to make one iota of difference for you in business?

I’m sure you would have heard about the supposed benefits of social media marketing. I’ve had a Facebook site for a couple of years now and didn’t do a lot with until quite recently. I didn’t really ‘get it’ – how I could leverage it but now it’s starting to gel.

I also set up a “LinkedIn” site about a year ago. It was pretty dormant until I started to make it work for me too but more on that later.

The Facebook site I attended too a little more often simply ‘cause of the friend requests I was getting. Then as my ‘friends’ base grew, some of these I don’t even know but maybe they’re a friend of a friend, and then it started to get a little interesting. One part that was surprised me was the blasts from the past, some of which I’d rather forget and am in total denial about – “That must have been another Peter Butler, wasn’t me” – but the point is this…

In Facebook I started to read and track the dialogue on the wall, if you know nothing about Facebook, that’s the ‘posts’ on the page – ‘wall’ and saw some interesting dialogue and started making comments. Just in the last 2 weeks I’ve made contact with 2 people that will lead to a venture or at least an introduction to ventures.

Now you need to get this, my interaction on Facebook hasn’t been all about flogging me or my wares. I posted some photos of how I broke my $20,000 swimming pool 2 days before Xmas, and I mean broke it, like the Xmas that was only 3 weeks ago but that’s another story, it’s in the photo shoot on Facebook. A sad story and we don’t talk about that anymore…

This is about making you known and real to people.

Like I’ve said many times before “People want to do business with people” and it’s great to show our weaknesses, our strengths and most of all our ‘humanness’.

Facebook is a great platform to do that, getting personal but from a distance.

Now you can also plug what’s happening for you in business. Using the “What are you doing now” feature is one way to go about that. I try to be more factual than do the ‘sell’ bit. Some people are really ‘in your face’ but they don’t do it for long. Remember, nobody wants to be ‘sold to’.

That’s the ‘social’ side of Facebook but the side spin is you’re also creating a name for yourself too.

Here’s the sexy thing for business. You can post video’s, straight from YouTube, you can post links direct to your website and you can create a specific ‘page’ for your business too.

I’ve posted my video to my personal profile and I’m just posting it to my business ‘page’ as we speak.

“Groups” can be created, something like ‘Smart Mortgage Marketers’ or whatever Your Niche Is, but I simply haven’t had time to set that up as yet. I’ll keep you posted on tips and tricks with that too.

Want To Get the Google Gods To Smile Upon You?… Yet Again.

You can also customize your Facebook link to reflect you or your business that you can use in on your website. This can be a good thing with your profile showing up with the blessing of the Google Gods. Think about it, your name is in the URL link. It will show up in all the search engines.

When I search my name I’m now on page 1 in Google and nearly fill the page. Two of those links are my Facebook site. Not bad considering I only showed a single result on page 5 only a few months ago.

I’ve got my Facebook social link as a link on my main website too.

My Facebook URL is http://profile.to/peterbutler/ and I’ve also got this set as a link on my Smart Mortgage Marketing site under ‘Social Links’.

There’s a whole host of stuff you can do to promote yourself using Facebook but it does need to be in balance time wise as there are other “social media” marketing sites out there and other ways to promote yourself.

Is Facebook worth the time? So far it’s been useful to me, just got to manage the time aspect, it’s very easy to get side tracked.

I tend to do the techy stuff like the video’s and stuff in my “primetime”, my most productive time, but I leave the chit chat and “friends’ list building for when I’m fatigued later or in the evening.

Have I made money from it yet? Not yet, but I most certainly will. When I check my Google Analytics I can see that traffic has come direct from Facebook so it is definitely working already. The more traffic the better always.

So what about “LinkedIn”?

As I said I also set up a “LinkedIn” site about a year ago but I certainly haven’t valued it as I should have. I’ve now invested time and started to make it work for me but that will have to be in the next post.

You’ll love the “toys” they’re adding that can help give you leads and also to improve its functionality.

Because “LinkedIn” is a professional platform there seems to be a high level of integrity too with protecting clients from abuse and the making “friends” or “connections” process.

I’ve generated 1 hot lead through it already so I’ll share that in a later post.

PS: My apologies if you’ve recently been getting random mostly empty emails from me, I’ve been doing some updating on the site and the automatic posting feature sent out an email with every minor tweak I did, woops, sorry about that!

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that generates a stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and it positions them as the experts in their area and ends all lame and frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit!