Everyone agrees that one way to draw attention to your business is by leveraging the power of Social Networking.  Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are very popular sites and could be harboring a large sum of potential customers for your business.

In fact, social networking activities calculate to about about 15% of all internet use daily – this is HUGE.

We all know about Facebook.  Whether you have your own account or you know of someone else who does, you are well aware that this is the most popular online social networking sites today.

Facebook has more than 750 Million users – imagine how many of your local customers you could reach just by using Facebook!

So when it comes to building and maintaining your company’s reputation, this is one place to start.

Studies show that Facebook users spend quite a bit of time logged in each day socializing, sharing information, and responding to messages.

So let’s say you have an unhappy customer who posts negative information about your business on your Facebook Fan page. You can respond to any negativity that comes your way immediately if you manage your Fan page properly.

It’s a known fact that people do business with those they like and trust. So if you can tap into those zones, you can eventually build a solid reputation that can’t be touched.

To do so, your main goal should be to share valuable information with your followers on a consistent basis as well as provide special discount offers from time to time.

Maintaining your online reputation also involves heavily monitoring what is being said about your business online.  If you don’t know that something negative has been said, you have no chance of responding to it or correcting it.

How detrimental could that be for your business?

So you are starting your new marketing journey and want to be sure to hit the internet with a bang. One of the easiest and most effective ways to accomplish this is by using customized, professional Facebook Fan pages.

Most business owners had one goal in mind when they decided to have a website built: To drive a flood of potential customers to the company website and experience a massive surge in sales.

However, it doesn’t happen like that for most businesses because they don’t know how to properly use the Internet to drive traffic to their websites and create a meaningful online presence.

To accomplish this, you will have to be strategic in the ways you establish an online presence. This involves putting yourself right in front of your prospects and customers. Most of them are hanging out online – namely Facebook.

So any business who needs more new customers and wants to build customer loyalty should seriously establish a presence on Facebook.

But it doesn’t stop there… you have to build relationships by being proactive and engaging with your audience.

Being connected to clients and prospects through the use of custom Fan pages will propel your product or service into the market with staying power.

If you need fresh business leads, repeat business, the ability to conduct surveys, or the ability to promote offers, custom Fan pages should be one of your initial online focal points.

As you’ve probably noticed, the most profitable businesses today have a dynamic charisma on the web. Studies have shown that social networking strategies are proven create long-term customers and ultimately boost profits.

Therefore, utilizing the power of Facebook Fan pages is really not an option – it’s a necessity today. Start socializing and soon you will experience an income surge as a result of smart planning and proper use of 21^st century tools.

Contests on FaceBook are a fantastic way to get a lot of people to join your fan page! People really enjoy entering contests, especially if they are easy to enter and have great prizes. You can even specifically state that the prize will be awarded when you hit a certain number of followers. This way you can get people to post the contest to their wall in order to get more entries, which will help the contest go viral.

That way you don’t have to award the prize unless you reach your target number of followers. Just be sure to keep the target number realistic, otherwise people won’t enter because they will feel the contest is a scam.

Another great way to use contests for marketing is to actually give away one of the products that you are selling.  If you have your own product, this is even more effective. Your entire contest can revolve around giving away a copy of your product, which will bring a lot of publicity and recognition to your product.

Marketing on Facebook is fairly easy, but there are several different ways to go about it. The easiest way is by setting up fan pages, so that people can click the “like” button and follow your updates.

It’s important that your fan page has a purpose if you want it to be successful. You must have a specific plan for your pages because people won’t click that button unless they like what they see.

Once you have created a great looking fan page make sure that you regularly post tips, gifts and links to videos on the page to keep people coming back to read and comment often. You can even run a contest to encourage participation.

If you are stuck for ideas just login to your Facebook account and do a search for your top keywords and see what others in your market are doing on their fan pages.

When you join a social networking site for the first time, there are a couple of unwritten ( or maybe written in some places) rules that you need to take into consideration.

Now these rules or tips may not make you a Millionaire overnight, but what they do is help build credibility and your good reputation online as someone people can trust and who knows his/her area of expertise well.

And here they are:

1. Don’t try to be funny

Some people will start to think business and start promoting their businesses or products on the spot. Wrong move. The purpose of sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. is to socialize, and you should just stick to that. This means no hard selling, no direct sales pitch, nada, zilch. It’s an environment where work and play has must go hand in hand.

2. Go where the traffic is

Sounds like common sense? You’d be surprised how many people actually over look this. If you see a huge community of people on Facebook talking about dog training for example, there’s your obvious pot of gold.

3. Give as much as possible

Yea, it is better to give than to receive. When offering people tips, advice, videos, files and other freebies, you are actually adding value to whatever you offer them in future and building up a credible reputation. Although it seems you might be on the losing end now, in the near future, you will reap untold profits from this once little action.

Of course there’s more to leveraging on the power of social media but right now, apply these tips and see your stock rise online!

Would you like more social media tips like this? Check out Social Marketing Superstar.