How to Choose the Right Social Networks for your Business

It seems like every day three or four new social networkings sites are born. Some of them are super-specific niche social networks while others allow members to mingle freely. There is absolutely no way you could keep up with every single social network that could possibly benenfit your blog/business/etc.

Before I continue, let me make it clear that this post is coming from a business perspective. If you are joining social networks solely for fun, romance or to keep in touch with friends, then this article doesn’t really apply to you. This information is for folks who are looking to build and market their business using social networking sites.

When they first started popping up, it was clear that social networks would definitely become the new chat rooms. Everyone was going to join them, become addicted to them and begin creating them. You probably joined many, many of these sites as they began appearing, creating profiles and entering your pertinent information.

That’s okay because those profiles can be a nice way to build some backlinks for your blog, but a profile alone is not going to help your business. The key to using social networks is to be social and network. Give this fact, if you create a profile one every new social network and never return you’re just wasting your time. In order to properly take advantage of social networks you need to be picky and you need to prepare yourself.

This article is designed to make social networking worthwhile for your business. I use the term “business” losely. Whether you have a blog, an information product, an offline brick and mortar store or all of the above, social networks can be a great tool to draw attention to your business, create buzz/interest and build/increase your customer base.

As I said, before you jump in you need to be prepared. I promise if you plan ahead you will be able to spend your time more wisely and see better results in less time. By asking yourself the follwing three questions, you can start your social network marketing out on the right foot.

Question One: What results and/or experiences are you looking for from a social network?

You know that a lot of businesses are really benefitting by becoming involved in social networks. How do you want your business to benefit? Be specific with this one. Do you simply want to create a sort of landing page to send folks to your website or do you actually want to become involved in the network. To answer this question you need to know if being social on the network would benefit your business.

Another benefit of participating in social networks is that you actually can network on them. There are many businesspeople on these networks wanting to trade advice, share stories, swap labor and all sorts of other, normal (=offline) business networking activities. You just need to find these people. Hint: Most of them are not on My Space.

Social networks are also a great place to learn new things. You can meet up (virtually or physically) with gurus, join mastermind groups and find out about upcoming seminars in your niche. Simply search for your business keywords on any network and see what you come up with. If it looks like a bunch of junk, then it’s probably not a network worth your time.

Question Two: Is your brand developed and are you ready to share it?

You want to head in fully branded. I don’t mean that other people need to know your brand, I mean that you need to know your brand. Social Networking users are very impatient. They have the world at their fingertips and if they can’t find exactly what they want quickly, they will move on. There are a lot of choices and no one wants to give any one choice too much time because the next one might be the right one.

You can’t be sure that your offering will be the right one. And, frankly, if your product or service isn’t right for someone you don’t want them around anyway. You have a very short amount of time to show social networkers who you are, what you do and what you can do for them. Your brand needs to make this clear enough at first glance to let people know if it is what they need. This combination of impatience and an overabundane of options is a dangerous one for businesses trying to succeed with social marketing.

It’s a bit like a man in who finds out that all his favorite teams are playing at the exact same time and he has to choose only one game to watch (humor me and pretend this was before DVR’s, okay?). Yes, that’s stereotypical, but it’s not meant to be offensive. Here, I’ll do a nice stereotypical example for women too. Social networking surfers are a bit like a woman who finds eighteen pairs of shoes she absolutely loves, but only has enough money to buy one pair. You need to make your brand clear so they can determine if you are the pair of shoes they need the most.

Question Three: Who are your Competitors on Social Networks

If you are a small fish (i.e. a new “make money online” blog), then you may not want to rely strictly on a big pond. Don’t spend days on Facebook making your profile perfect and building a network of “friends” who are also friends with a hundred other bloggers in the same niche.

Yes, you do want a presence on the big sites, but you don’t want to waste time focusing on them exclusively. Spend a couple of hours creating your Facebook presence and sending some friend requests. Then start researching smaller niche-based social networks where you have the opportunity to rise to “big fish” status more quickly.

The “make money online” niche is a good niche to use as an example because it is exceptionally difficult to make a name in it. The reasons for this are threefold:

• Tons of other folks are trying to make it in the MMO niche.
• MMO niche bloggers/website owners are generally tech-savvy so you need to really be on top of the newest developments in order to compete.
• Being progressively-minded when it comes to technology, many MMO bloggers were the first people to start blogs so you’re competing against some very strongly established sites.

I don’t think it’s impossible to make a name in the MMO/blogging/Internet Marketing niche, I just think you have to work a lot harder than if you choose something a bit less crowded and just as lucrative. Say, a super-specific health topic or a video site about personal finance. Yes, these are crowded niches, but if you get original or specific enough with your content, you have a great opportunity to profit big-time.
Regardless of your niche, you need to research each social network before you decide if you can make it work for you. A good way to do this is to simply search for your niche keywords on the network and see what results you get. If there aren’t that many competitors that could be great. But it could also mean that your niche isn’t that important to people using that site. When trying to choose small niche sites, here are the ideal citeria:

• Not too much competition
• Lots of interest

It’s really the same thing you look for if you are going to start a niche blog or website. You want to be able to find hungry prospects. If there is tons of competition, they won’t be hungry. And if they don’t care about your niche then they’re not prospects; at least not for you.

Social Networking can be a very successful way to market your business online. However, it can also become a huge waste of time. By going in with some ground rules established and knowing exactly what you have to offer and what you want to achieve, you’ll have a much better chance of social marketing success.