Guest Post: Connect with your audience socially and reap the benefits

I often get requests for people with a point of view on marketing or issues I have raised to provide a guest posting for this blog. I am going to experiment with having them to see how they go down if they add to the debate on issues I have raised. I do not receive any payment and don't take paid for postings by the way.

This posting was written by Christopher Angus, who descibes himself as "an award winning Internet Marketer, who owns SEOCompanyUK.com in the UK" and is on a topic dear to my heart at the moment and something am trying to work on for brands I work on.

Connect with your audience socially and reap the benefits

"Social media is the new kid on the block when it comes to internet marketing; however, it’s one of the biggest arrivals in the last decade and should not be ignored. Brands can be made and destroyed in the blink of an eye due to the effect of social media.

Social media is all about being social. It’s about connecting with a group of people, creating something interesting or useful and growing a group of fans. These fans are like fans of any other brand, but you can develop them quickly and relatively inexpensively when compared with traditional brand building. You don’t need to give things away to grow a group of fans; social media is still quite altruistic in a sense and fans will follow anything that tickles their interest.

It’s these people that will become your online PR machine, they will say nice, flowery things about you and your business so that it will grow. Be kind to your audience and don’t try to relentlessly market your products to them and they will reward you with loyalty and positivity when asked about your business or products.

Connecting with your audience and cultivating a loyal group of followers is hard work initially but very rewarding. It’s highly important that you make the right connections initially as a fault in the beginning can kill your whole social media campaign. When it’s got traction and you have momentum, you can then take a few risks and start to try to promote your product subtly.
The most popular platforms to grow your brand at the moment, include, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In among others. It’s a form of “online networking” only with access to millions of people in a very short space of time.

Once you have built your relationships, you can use your connections to promote your business, help you with a product launch or get feedback on a new concept you're maybe considering. It’s a huge amount of power to have at the tips of your fingers, all for almost nothing, just the time to build your social connections around yourself.

People that take the time and effort to build their social networks today, will reap the benefits tomorrow, they will be literally years ahead of people that haven’t taken the time or bothered to grow their own networks."

My question for readers:
What is the best example you have of a brand doing all of this well?? Write a comment in the blog or email me using the link on the blog.