Scott Henderson Internet Marketing - How to start an Internet Business

Social media is huge today and for anybody learning how to start an Internet business, social media should play a role. When used correctly it can drive massive amounts of traffic.

There are several social media sites today with new ones being added daily. The three biggest sites are Facebook, You Tube, and Twitter, together they reach well over 500 million users daily. As a minimum you should have user accounts set up for these three sites.

When it comes to establishing your user accounts for social media sites you should give some careful attention to the process. Following are some tips on setting up and using your accounts.

• Use the same user name for all accounts if possible. The nature of your business will play a role in the process. For Networking it is a good idea to use your full name.
• Brand your accounts to have the same theme across all of them. Some social media sites will give you more flexibility than others when it comes to the design of your page. This theme should also carry over to your blog or website. If you have a logo incorporate it into each site.
• Completely setup the account by using as many of the options that are available for you to enter information about yourself. Make sure that you come up with an interesting biography about yourself given the amount of space you can use. For example Twitter will limit you to 160 characters so use it wisely.
• Use professional looking photos of yourself. Use photos that shows a friendly smiling face.
• Remember this is about social interaction and not a means for you to constantly talk about your business. You should post useful or interesting posts at a ratio of about 10 to 1 compared to your business related posts.
• Make sure you do not flood the site with too many posts per day. A good average for most social media sites will be about 8 to 12 posts per day. For video sites, 3 to 5 per week is a good goal to strive for in the beginning.
• Promote your accounts everywhere possible. On other social media accounts, on your blogs, websites, in forums, and any other place where you have the opportunity to do so.

There are many more details to running an effective social media campaign, but these are the basics that will get you off to a good start. Remember to follow the guidelines on what is permissible for each of the sites. In a future article I will discuss some more details about running a social media campaign.

Scott Henderson
Internet Marketing Consultant/Coach