Weaving social media into your business marketing plan doesn’t have to be a complicated affair. The basic principles are simple and straight forward. In fact I’ll lay out the whole explanation for you right here. It’s yours for free to get you started with social media today.

Are you ready? Here you go!

Basic Truth

Before we get to the plan we need to understand this basic foundational principle.

People do business with you because they know you, like you, and trust you.

Unless all three things are in place you will have a tough time having a sustainable business. Miss any one element to that and, unless you are selling a commodity that people are buying purely on price, people will nearly always choose to buy from someone else.

Get In Front of People

In order for people to know who you are you have to get in front of them. Most all business people understand this, that’s the whole point of advertising. The more eyeballs that see an ad, the more valuable, and expensive it is.

Right now there are hundreds of millions of people on social media sites every day. This year social media sites passed pornography sites as the number 1 web traffic sites. As far as the web is concerned now, social media is the biggest traffic driver out there.

And the best part? We can get in front of those people without spending any money! All we have to do is join those communities, and engage them by becoming a valuable member.

Then people with know us and we’re 1/3 the way there.

Build an Audience

The second part of the equation is having people like us. That means we have to build an audience. We do that by being interesting.

For example, a quick scan through the top 50 most followed Twitter accounts on Twitterholic shows the most popular accounts are overwhelmingly celebrities, media companies, and big name brands, all with over a million followers.

Think about why celebrities command such big audiences. People find them interesting.

Now we may not be able to command nearly 4 million followers on Twitter like Ashton Kutcher does, but the more interesting we are, the larger an audience we’ll attract.

That means just droning on about our business, or “automating” the process won’t really help us in the long run. We may see some short term gain. But people see through that kind of thing fairly quickly. Instead be your interesting authentic self.

Interesting Builds an Audience.

That gets us two-thirds the way there. But there’s still one more piece…

Be Helpful

One the best ways to build trust is to be helpful. When you see people asking questions in your area of expertise give them the answer. Point them in the right direction. Volunteer info.

And you don’t have to point them back to your own website all the time either. Only point to your own site if it is the best resource you can think of to solve the problem. People generally remember folks who do nice things for them.

Over time people will begin to respect your expertise and see the value in what you have to offer. With consistency you build trust.

Eventually you’ll find that people start referring their friends to you as the one to talk to when they run into a problem you can solve. Those referrals will translate into increased business.

It all starts with being helpful to build trust.

In Video Form

If you’d rather see this in video form check out this one. It’s less than 3 minutes and is just an example of the great stuff you can get, for free, over on ChrisCree.TV. Did I mention they’re yours to watch for free?

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