Social Networking for Business: How Women are Leading the Way

When it comes to social networking for business, the key players to watch are women entrepreneurs who are revolutionizing marketing on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.

Internet marketing, generally dominated by men, uses a very different approach than social marketing. The hard sell, always-be-closing approach falls flat in the Web 2.0 world of relationship building.

With social networking as a marketing strategy, the focus is on planting the seeds of trust and likeability that blossom into profits later on. Traditional internet marketing takes a much more aggressive approach- all you have to do is look at a typical sales page from an internet marketer versus a Facebook profile page and you’ll see the difference.

If you look around at people who are rising to the top of social networking, you will see the brightest and the best tend to be women. What does that tell you? From an anthropological point of view, you can say that women are wired to approach things from a relationship point of view, rather than a combative one. While the warrior was out spearing the wooly mammoth, the woman was back at the cave making nice with the neighbors and forming bonds for survival.
Unfortunately, even a lot of successful women internet marketers need to un-learn their internet sales training as they transition into the world of social marketing. Here are some tips to remember as you use social networking tools to grow your business and boost your visibility.

1.    Focus on Relationship Building
It bears repeating, but relationship building is the foundation for success in social networking and anything Web 2.0. When you meet someone online, you want to focus first on learning who they are. It’s not about saying “Hi” then sending them to a sales page. In romantic terms,

2.    Don’t Abuse Signature Lines
In internet marketing, you’re taught to make the most of every piece of real estate on a page- especially your signature line. When you sign your social networking messages with links to your opt-in page or even your blog, then you’re perceived as being pushy. Pushy people are the party crashers of Web 2.0 and don’t make many lasting relationships!

3.    Comment From the Heart
One way to build relationships with others is to offer genuinely helpful comments on their pages. A bad habit carried over from the traditional internet marketing world is to use the comments as a place for self-promotion. Someone leaves a comment on another person’s blog or wall, then follows it up with a 2 line promotion for their upcoming teleclass. Bad, bad, bad!  You know the caricature of the tacky tourist wearing plaid shorts, dark socks, and dress shoes? OK, THAT is how you come across when you do stuff like that.

Social networking isn’t going away and there is enough room out there for everyone to taste success. Take a relationship building approach and see for yourself: the results hold the potential to be astounding.