Online Marketing Vault

Online marketers have discovered Social Networks as a way to generate traffic, improve search engine rankings, build opt in lists and make sales.

The problem for many people who want to take advantage of all the benefits of using these networks is that they are unsure of how to begin.

With thousands of these networks online, many people are afraid of committing their time, energy and money on the sites or approaches that won’t yield the desired results.

That’s what motivated Charles Heflin to devise his Social Marketing Blueprint Formula. He wanted to make sense out of what appears to be a big mess of social sites on the net.

The way he did this was to find the constants or the elements of social networks or marketing that we can rely upon to not change.  So if a certain social network site went out of business, his strategy will still survive and will continue to work on sites that would replace it.

In his report, Heflin first explains the major benefits of participating in social networks as mentioned previously (traffic, ranking & action) to motivate the reader.

He defines what a social network is (members should be able to communicate with each other or within their groups) so we can recognized one when we need to.

He then describes two market types, Type 1 for anything considered social or people have conversations about; Type 2 for anything non-social or things people don’t usually talk to other people about. Knowing which type your business falls under will later help you figure out which social networks to focus on.

Heflin then breaks down the social networks into four categories: A Networks - allow you to communicate with other members; B Networks - allow you to submit articles and add bookmarks; C Networks - allow you to submit RSS feeds; D Networks - allow you to use widgets or small web applications that provide interactivity or  enhances the visitor’s experience.

Next, the report goes into what Heflin calls the X factor, which is what you want  to accomplish with social networks. You are suppose to chose one factor from eight possible combinations of S for social traffic, R for ranking in the search engines,  1 for type 1 markets and 2 for type 2 markets.

Heflin also recommends you have a Hook or H in his formula, if you want traffic coming from the social networks and you are in a Type 1 business or market.  The hook is something that will attract people from social networks ultimately to your site.  Your hook is your SE - Social Etiquette (communicating in a genuine non-selling way) plus C - Content (giving information helpful to your group) and T - Trust (they will buy from you because your Social Etiquette and helpful content created this trust).

Each of the market types, network categories, your X factor and/or your Hook are the elements that make up the formula or blueprint you can use with confidence to find the right social networks to be active in.  Based on each of these constants, we can create however many customized blueprints we need for each of the niche sites we have to present ourselves and our messages (sales) to the people who participate in the social networks.

Charles Heflin also provides additional strategies or advice on how to use his formula and make it work for you.  For example, he explains what to say and not to say in your friend requests.  When you send messages to friends in your group, make sure the content you have is new and don’t over send to them or they will leave your group.

Charles Heflin has setup a special forum for people who want to share their thoughts about his formula. When you join you will get access to an excel worksheet that organizes a list of social network sites by Alexa rank and category.

Conclusion

Some companies are willing to pay up to $15,000 for someone else to figure out the right mix of social networks and actions to take to market their products to social networks.

Charles Heflin devoted three months working on the  Social Marketing Blueprint Formula. You can read his report in less than an hour and start taking advantage of the system he devised for clearly getting instant traffic, higher search engine rankings and opt ins or sales from the social networks.

Click here to find out how to download and read the report for free.