Not everyone who goes online joins a social networking site with the ulterior motive of making more money. However there are many people who are trying to build Internet businesses and use social networking as a marketing tool.
Here are a few ideas on using social networking to make money, to have fun, or both!
1. Join a small number of social networking sites and use those to develop your own online identity. You can make the mistake of joining too many sites and not getting any benefit out of any of them.
A better strategy is to join a handful of sites such as Facebook and Twitter and work hard at developing those in two large social markets of your own.
These are great sites to develop an identity that describes who you are, what your personal values are, what products you promote, and so on. By making your social networking efforts as personal as possible you will ultimately get to know more people on a personal level and make more money at the same time.
2. Spend as much time as necessary creating your online profile. For example with Twitter you get to choose a screen name. One thing you can do is choose a name that draws attention to the type of business you are in. If your goal is to brand yourself then use your name and a quality picture that is memorable.
If the product is what you’re trying to brand then customize it and make it more personable to your viewers. Ultimately by spending a little bit of extra time creating your profile and screen name you can get more people to click through to your website.
3. Start your own group. For example if you look at Facebook there are groups for various things such as products, celebrities, and businesses. People can join your group and become a fan on it.
By getting your group going you can create a group identity which will help increase the number of members belonging to it. You can also have interactive activities that make it more fun to be in the group.
Starting a group of your own helps you get a captive audience that you might not have otherwise. Although you never want to do spamming in any way, a certain percentage of people who join your group will check out what you are doing to make money online.
These are a few simple ideas of social networking for fun and profit. If you consistently work at social networking it can pay you back many times over.