Where Are You Directing Your Social Media Contacts?

Everyone wants to be heard, each business needs to promote their product and certainly social media networking can be instrumental in providing a platform for both of these to happen.

If you dabble in any social media site from Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to the blog hosting directories, you will have come across the 're-hasher', a contact who's sole purpose is to re-post/tweet/digg articles and sites already catelogued. There are mixed views on the purpose of following a re-hasher.....on a positive note, much of the searching is already completed and by carefully chosing who to follow, it is possible to cut out much of the time spent searching for genres of interest to you or your business. Putting this into reverse, is the re-hasher ever taken seriously as having views of their own if they are constantly directing you elsewhere on the web.

Applying both these scenarios as a business networking on social sites, you have to ask the question: where do you want to direct your followers?  If it is anywhere on the web-sphere, then following re-hashers is the way forward, or even becoming one yourself. But surely it would be any business objective to channel followers back to you, your business, your site and your product, after all, that is how you would want to craft your message. 

It is human nature to fixate on the next big 'thing', also within our mentality to turn our backs on boring, mundane, old news.....so our mission must be to engage our followers, keep them coming back to us for more, and offer variety, spark, vitality in our website/blog content. That is how we will convert visitors into customers, contacts into subscribers, all in the name of our 'brand'.

A great, content driven website/blog will provide new focus on each visit, articles of interest, personal opinions on your profession or speciality and hopefully ensure the visitor keeps returning. Without new content, it is too easy for interest in your business to wane. A blog can help bridge the gap between your website and frequently changing content.....it is easy to post new content as much as your time allows and with research and planning not hard to retain a reader's interest.

When advising our clients on which, if any, social media tool to use to promote and enhance their business, putting a blog online is our first suggestion. Any media push on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook WILL generate traffic to your site even if it is only for a quick look.  All that is needed is a dozen 2 paragraph articles written and hosted before any social media campaign begins. With this in place, there is now a fantastic resource to direct your new followers and contacts to.....your brand and subsequently your product.

Worth a read....
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