Lisa Torres "The Social Butterfly"

Chances are is that you've at least hear of social networking and chances are pretty good that you've participated in some. But, you may not understand exactly how to use it to grow your business and at the same time you've probably started using it and have become a little frustrated or discouraged .

Social networking provides a small business owner or anyone who has a business to connect with your warm market. It also gives you a chance to meet new people that you would never meet otherwise. I myself have online friends all over the world that I chat with every now and then. You can get to know these people in your target market and develop those relationships and eventually, those will turn into business clients, customers, prospects, team members or even just friends.

1. Social networking is growing in popularity and many of the sites (Facebook in particular) offer networks and groups specifically for meeting and sharing ideas with like-minded people.

2. With the increasing number of visitors to social networking sites as well as their popularity, they can offer you a great new place for advertising. Many of them offer button ads, pay per click ads (PPC) and other forms of advertising for a much more reasonable price.

3. Many social networking sites offer you ways in which you can promote your blog. With the popularity of blogs nowadays, it's becoming expected that as a business person of significance, you will have a blog. Placing these blogs on these social networking sites allows you to grow your readership and at the same time it allows you to offer value so that you can position yourself as the expert.

4. Social networking sites allows you to connect with you target market or niches in ways that are much more difficult offline or with traditional methods. Now, that does not mean that you should not go out to face-to-face networking groups because you should.

5. Social networking sites allows you to maintain a constant presence in front of your target market at all times. It only takes a few minutes each day to add new friends, read comments, post comments, send them emails, participate in groups, etc. It may seem like it's time consuming but really the only time consuming part is when you first get set up. Once your all set up, it really only takes about 10 or 15 minutes a day to maintain. Just be sure not to spend no more than 45 minutes on a site because it can become very addicting and can eat up a lot of your time and can take away from you being productive in other important areas of your business.

6. Lastly, the best part of social networking sites is that they are FREE....which is what we all like. Especially as small business owners.

So, what do you do when you meet these people? I would suggest these 3 most important things....

1. Get to know them. Show them that you really want to learn about what it is that THEY do.

2. Offer them something free that is related to their particular target market and then develop that relationship so that you can go on and do business together.

3. Always keep in touch. Even if it's just once a month.

Lisa Torres
www.gbnllc.com
www.MLMPowerHouseSystem.info