A business of any kind needs customers or clients to be financially successful and most businesses strive to be the leading company in their industry by developing a strong customer base.
To be considered a leader, you need people to follow you and to run a leading business you need clients to follow; simple as that.
The same truth holds for operating an online business and luckily there are many ways to develop a following for your internet venture.
The emergence of social networking sites has taken online marketing to a whole new level by enabling you to actually market to and track who is following your business.
They provide you with access to millions of people around the world and make it possible to sort profiles by interests; making it easier to identify your target audience.
One such site is Twitter.
This networking site is straightforward and easy to use.
You can search for specific people or businesses or you can search by keyword with the number symbol in front.
When you do a keyword search the site will list all the most recent "tweets" with that word in it.
This way you can find people and companies within your industry to network with.
You can "follow" them so that all their tweets are made visible to you and you stay up to date on industry trends and news, and quite often they will follow you back and many of their followers will also follow your tweets, which can lead back to your website and a growing list of potential clients.
Facebook is another popular networking site.
It was used mostly by college students in the beginning, but it has developed into much more than that, offering the tools to create business pages and groups.
A business page can be set up like a permanent web page that people can join, communicate their thoughts and ideas and be notified whenever the page is updated or there are new photos added.
Whenever someone joins your group their friends will be notified on their home page so they can view the group and decide whether to join it themselves.
The key is to constantly update your site to drive as much traffic as possible to your business.
These are just two ways to generate a following for your business, but they are both free to use and very powerful.
To be considered a leader, you need people to follow you and to run a leading business you need clients to follow; simple as that.
The same truth holds for operating an online business and luckily there are many ways to develop a following for your internet venture.
The emergence of social networking sites has taken online marketing to a whole new level by enabling you to actually market to and track who is following your business.
They provide you with access to millions of people around the world and make it possible to sort profiles by interests; making it easier to identify your target audience.
One such site is Twitter.
This networking site is straightforward and easy to use.
You can search for specific people or businesses or you can search by keyword with the number symbol in front.
When you do a keyword search the site will list all the most recent "tweets" with that word in it.
This way you can find people and companies within your industry to network with.
You can "follow" them so that all their tweets are made visible to you and you stay up to date on industry trends and news, and quite often they will follow you back and many of their followers will also follow your tweets, which can lead back to your website and a growing list of potential clients.
Facebook is another popular networking site.
It was used mostly by college students in the beginning, but it has developed into much more than that, offering the tools to create business pages and groups.
A business page can be set up like a permanent web page that people can join, communicate their thoughts and ideas and be notified whenever the page is updated or there are new photos added.
Whenever someone joins your group their friends will be notified on their home page so they can view the group and decide whether to join it themselves.
The key is to constantly update your site to drive as much traffic as possible to your business.
These are just two ways to generate a following for your business, but they are both free to use and very powerful.