By now, you’ve hopefully already joined the social networking revolution. In the midst of adding friends and neighbors, you’ve probably been all giddy over the networking opportunities you’ve now been presented with. Who wouldn’t get excited – considering that some 340 million + global users are currently using social networks!
Not to burst your social networking bubble, but this week’s tip is a very important one. It deals with email marketing and communicating with this plethora of prospects you have at your disposal.
While social networks encourage you to meet and communicate with other people with similar likes and dislikes, sites like Facebook, MySpace and ma Chatterbox are in fact just that – a means to communicate with other people on a personal level. Anyone wishing to market their business is asked to do so in specific places, or risk accusations of abuse and spamming.
Facebook, for example, has an alternate means for people wanting to promote a business. While you would setup a profile to connect with your friends, anyone wanting to promote a business to others needs to do so by creating a separate Facebook fan page. Not only is a fan page a great way for you to highlight your business and keep it separate from your personal account, but it allows you to contact people that have opted to become a fan of your business. This helps keep Facebook happy, not to mention your friends and acquaintances!
So how do you setup a Fan page for your business? Simple!
Visit the following link to get started, it literally takes 5 minutes:
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages
What’s great about a fan page is that it acts very similar to a profile page – you can write on the wall, post pictures, videos, etc…, with the exception being that people have to opt-in to receive any sort of email from you regarding a business. Now about those consequences – by not following the above requirements, which are governed under the CAN-SPAM Act, you can be fined a hefty sum (we’re talking at minimum, $250 per email address). And if you want further proof, a Facebook spammer was fined some $873 million (http://snurl.com/socialnetworking_email).
Definitely worth the time to network the right way don’t you think?
If anyone has questions on marketing through social networking, please send an email to
internetmarketing@marketamerica.com and include “email marketing on social networks” in the subject line.
Sincerely,
Your Internet Marketing Manager