Sarah’s 5 tips (“write copy in your own words”, “add value”, “get involved”, “know when to outsource” and lastly “collect inspiration”) are without a doubt some of the cornerstones of building your business into a successful online brand.

I’d like to add the following 3 tips to Sarah’s list that in my experience plays a huge role in online business success.

1. Choose Your Brand

You must choose to either promote yourself (by name) or your business name as your brand, not both.  Hereby I’m not saying you can’t use both, but it will be to your advantage to choose one primary brand. The key here is to take in account what your goals are and in what direction you want to take your business.

John Jantsch of Ducttapemarketing.com posted an interesting blog post in this regard named “Your Business is Worthless if it Depends on You”. In it he presses the point of the importance of knowing where you want your business to be in 5 or 10 years.

I think many people start promoting themselves and their name as “the business”, because it’s easier since they themselves already know of who they are and what they stand for. Also in the social media world, people tend to relate better to a person, than a brand.

There are numerous examples of successful brands finding success in social media such as ProBlogger (Darren Rowse) and CopyBlogger (Brian Clark) to name a few.

So it’s a good idea to weigh your options, before locking in on one thing or the other.

2. Brain Trust

Whichever social media platform you choose, it’s sure to be filled with people that can help you find success in your business as you can help them find success in theirs. In this vast pools of wisdom that are social media websites find people that operate in your business area and then make a point to learn what they know through their posts, their website, their feed, wherever they express their thoughts. Also remember Sarah’s third point of getting involved, interacting, asking questions and providing information.

3. Go offline

Offline promotion and conferences, meet-ups (or tweet-ups) or any kind of real life meet-and-greet, is a great way to get your online business out in the open, seen and talked about. Meeting your social media relationships and building upon them in person, will not only cement your relationship, but also open up for new opportunities that transcends the reach of online social media platforms.

As Sarah also points out in the post, utilizing social media to achieve worthwhile business results is about taking action, surrounding yourself with the right people, adding value to your business market and letting as much inspirational information encompass you and your business to create the perfect online environment to grow your business.

What social media websites do you find are the best fit for your business? Do you have any social media online business success stories, you’d like to share? Please feel free to leave comments below.

Take Twitter as an example. As soon as you follow over 200 people, you’re overwhelmed with tweets and you’re not them all read, even less so click on the links in the tweets to see what’s behind them.

What determines which tweets you read and click on is a mix of your relationship and history with the person tweeting, but also the nature of the tweet itself. “GET $1 MILLION A YEAR ON AUTOPILOT NOW!!!!! JUST CLICK HERE —> XYZXYZ <—-NOW! NOW! NOW!” might have worked at some point, but those days are long gone. No one is going to click the link.

However if you come across a tweet that oozes enthusiasm and passion and genuine personal interest by the person tweeting, I dare you not to click that link.

When you tweet a link that appeals to people’s curiosity like that, obviously it can’t link to a “GET $1 MILLION” spam or any kind of “in-your-face-marketing” website. That would kill all credibility you’d have built in an instant.

Depending on your audience and your persona, you probably can’t post “enthusiastic” tweets all the time. Even if you’re a wildly enthusiastic person, you might want to hold back a little or spread your enthusiasm love on other social media websites.

Next time you come across a tweet that drew you in with enthusiasm and made you click, please come back and post a comment about it. I love those enthusiastic tweets.

Photo credit Stock.XCHNG

I just wanted to post a quick blog post on a perfect example of a way to recognize your community and make people feel appreciated. Marie Forleo uses a great technique on her blog “Marie Forleo – Live Rich, Happy & Hot” where she makes her readers part of her video blog posts by going through their comments on her previous blog posts.

Marie uses her video blog optimally by great video editing and showing the viewer herself on camera as she browses her blog, a website or whatever she’s talking about at that moment. See an example of her use of the “video response” in her post on “growing your business with social media”.

As you can see, she makes her visitors feel noticed and appreciated. She makes her blog about two-way communication, makes it a “social” media and I sure that she saw a huge increase both visitors and re-visitors to her blog after she started video blogging this way.

I’d like to know what your opinions of video blogging are? Do you normally watch the video, when a (word) blogger sometimes makes a video blog?

Finding the right connection with people online can be difficult due to the high amount of data and information flying around. Your real “friendship invitation” might drown in a sea of information. In a recent blog post I touched this issue, “Interaction Good, Stalking Bad – How to Make First Contact”.

In order to make an actual connection with someone, both parties will need to “click”. There will need to be some kind of attraction between the parties, whether it’s business attraction, personal attraction or both. In this regards, it’s useful to keep in mind that deep down people crave the same things, which I’ve called A.S.S. (to grab your attention mostly). These are:

1. Acceptance

“Deep down even the most hardened criminal is starving for the same thing that motivates the innocent baby: Love and acceptance.” (Lily Fairchilde)

Everyone wants acceptance from someone. It can be anything really, but mostly people wants acceptance of who they are. In order to connect with someone you need to accept them for who they are. Allow them to be themselves and influence them positively through your own actions.

2. Seal of Approval

“Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them.” (Norman Vincent Peale)

I recently wrote a blog post on finding happiness through social media, where I suggested that you’d try paying two (genuine) compliments per day to someone in your social media network. No matter who you are it feels good to get approval.

Look at the actions of the person that you’re trying to connect with and find something to approve in these no matter the size of the action. The important thing is that it’s something that you genuinely approve of and that you keep at it. With each compliment you’ll let the other person know that you approve of their actions and your relationship will grow. On Twitter this could be something as simple as a “retweet” or a comment on something the person said.

3. Salute

“The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” (William James)

The third point is probably the most important when building a relationship through social media. Treat people as if they are valuable to you. Obviously they are valuable to you, otherwise you wouldn’t use all this energy to find a connection with them, but it might not be obvious to them. Let them know that they’re important to you. Thank them. Makes them feel special, that they are an individual and not just part of the mob.

On social media sites this latter point is easy, but it’s as easy to do wrong. Everyone needs an individual message just for them that basically says, “I salute you.”

Finally, I’d like to add that in order for you to get an actual connection with someone online, this someone obviously at some point needs to “give something back” to you. Even if it’s not your motivation, usually you’ll find that this will be the case anyhow. Whatever attracted you to the person in the first place will as a rule shine through at some point.

What about you? Have you found business relationship through social media that has blossomed into a profitable “friendship”?

Photo credit Stock.XCHNG