So why would you use a web designer and pay the extra $$?  Web designers exist for three very good reasons:

• They understand the web
• They understand how the web works
• They know what they’re doing (usually)

Why is it wrong to use a template?

• The website still needs to be customized

Many of these templates are ready to go once you download them, however, they will still need  to be customized to suit your specific design needs.  Unless you happen to be a whiz at HTML you’re going to need a web designer.

•  Not unique for business branding

If you use a template, that’s going look like thousands of other sites out there. It won’t stand out and be noticed. It’s much better to get a custom design that will make your business brand stand out.

• Restricted Usage

Any downloaded template could become difficult to tweak to make it uniquely your own. Remember there are licensing agreements with the template designer about how you can use the template, and eventually, you just may need to link to the designer’s own website.

• There are billions and billions

Or at least hundreds, possibly thousands of businesses already using the same template. Do you really want clients to see you as a generic entity when you can be so much more??

• Bad news for SEO

Many templates aren’t designed with SEO in mind so getting the search engine spiders to crawl your site could be difficult, and as for ranking…if it can’t be crawled you’re not going to rank.

So if you’re thinking about downloading a template, any template, think again. If you’re serious about marketing your business online you’re going to have to make a serious investment. This is not the place to cut corners.

Rule #2 – Identify Your Market

Now that you know what your goals are, identify a target market for each of your goals. Make sure you delve into the characteristics you consider when identifying your targets. What do I mean when I talk about characteristics?

1.)  Consider consumer demographics, such as age, income, gender, geographic location, parental status, education, etc. Using demographics helps define your marketing plan. For example, gaming sites might be geared for younger generations while others dealing with wedding dresses or baby clothes are popular with females.

Why do demographics matter? You need to make sure you have all targets lined up in order to make sure you’re following the social media avenues that are best for your business. Begin slowly, say with geographical location. Then add to that while you monitor the results. This allows you to zero-in on the right set of marketing platforms.

2.)  Personality Types

Why would you target certain personality traits? If you want to earn advertising revenue through collaborative content generations, you would There are many classifications of personality types that would fit your particular goals, but some of the basics are:

• Collaborative – leaves comments and responses to queries of other people, such as reviewers and critics.
• Participative – responds to polls and surveys.
• Non-collaborative and non-participative information consumers
• Competitors

3.)  Consumers of competitors’ services/products

Research where your competitors are targeting their marketing to save yourself some effort to identify your own marketing needs. This does not preclude you doing your own identification of new markets or other markets to which you can also link.

4.)  Consumers of specific products or services

Research to identify other markets that could use your service. The example Douglas Idugboe uses is a relationship between wedding planners and honeymoon packages. Think a little more and you can add hair stylists and makeup artists to this list. See all the various groups that could become your target audience?

5.)  Organizations and groups

LinkedIn is tailor made for targeted social media marketing. There are many theme based groups online. It only takes you doing some research to identiy these groups.

Stay tuned for Rule#3 – Know Your Market

Rule #1 - Know your why

Why do you want to use social marketing to help your business? What do you want to achieve by using it? You need to thoroughly understand your goals and expectations before you delve into social media marketing.

Every niche market has its own sets of reasons to participate so remember to add to the reasons listed above.

Coming soon: Rule #2 – Identify you market

Regular Updates: How often are you “sharing” information on your news feed? To  achieve optimum utilization of the news feed, you need to update at least once a day.  You need to keep your status fresh  and exciting. Initially, you can update your news feed on the days your business is open. But you might want to consider also sending out an update even when you’re not, just to keep an edge on your competition.

Variety of Updates: Don’t share only one type of media format, such as text or pictures. Shake up the news feeds by mixing your media. Pictures spread quickly, and with the right photo, can generate sales.  Keep your audience engaged so they keep returning to  your page.

Traffic: What good is having a Facebook business page if you don’t have a plane to drive traffic to it? Consider incorporating multiple methods of driving traffic, such as social plugins, Facebook ads, email blasts and more. By using various methods, you have a wonderful opportunity to engage prospects and customers.

Consistently reaching your audience with a variety of updates  from various traffic generating methods, you will have a business presence that generates conversations and sales.

But if you’re a start-up or owner/operator with one or two employees, social media becomes daunting, sucking up time that should be spent on your business or your family. It doesn’t have to be that way. Many applications are available that can help you tweet and save you time. You don’t need to be tied to the computer because there are many mobile phone apps as well.

Some helpful applications are:

Group Tweet: Instead of using Direct Messaging, you can finally send private messages to more than one person without having to repeatedly copy and past for each individual user.

Twittercounter: Email a Twitter update and receive replies your tweet might receive. This is a handy app if you don’t have access to a web browser or twitter.

TweetBeep: Want to read what people are saying about you, your blog, or your products without having to continually monitor your account. Regular updates can be sent on any search term you select.

TweetShare: Twitter makes it cumbersome to share pictures, but TweetShare allows you to share multimedia content. It also allows you to organize a conversation about the content.

Twitter for Busy People: This is pretty kool because it groups together tweets by individual users so you can quickly see what they’ve been up to without having to wade through everyone else’s tweets.

Are you using any other Twitter apps that save you time or are really useful?