If you want to make money through social media efforts, it must be clear how people can benefit if they pay you for your products or services.
Often, people are using social media as a direct sales tactic and then find that they’re really not making any money with it. How are you generating revenue? Are you selling products or services? Without a specific plan of action and product or service to promote, there is no way to make money through social media.
Sending out tweets or Facebook updates and gathering followers, isn’t going to bring in the bucks to pay the bills. If you want to turn a profit, you must have a plan for making sales.
If you are offering a service, how do you plan to measure and track your results? Is there a cost associated with this? If you are offering a product, how are you getting it to the customer? Where do they go to ultimately purchase it? How does that affect your bottom line? Your plan should outline all of your expenses, goals and projections.
If you want to make money, you must have a plan. It should tell who you are, what you have to offer, how you plan to get the word out about your offerings, who will be on your team and how you plan to grow.
Making money using social media really boils down to social media being a great place to advertise. However, consumers don’t want the hard sell all the time. You should be selling by educating and a good rule of thumb I have found is that you should offer your services or product no more than 1 out of every 4 posts and you should target your audience.
Facebook
34% of Facebook’s users make less than $18K a year with the $18-$37K users coming in second with 26%. This could be due to the fact that Facebook is widely used by the younger generation between 16-24 whose earnings are not as high as the 35-46 year olds.
Google+
Google+ has a different demographic to Facebook with the highest percentage of its user base coming from those who make $62K or more. Google+ also counts the lowest percentage of their user base from those making under $18K.
Twitter
Almost 1 in 5 (17%) of Twitter users earn more than $62,000 per year. There are a lot of influential celebrities on this network, along with successful businessmen and women. Overall, the earnings of Twitter users are on par with Tumblr, each of whom have a third of their user base earning below $18K per year, with around half earning between $18K and $62K.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn has a larger percentage of high income wage earners than most social networks. LinkedIn counts 27 % of their social network from the $62K plus bracket. LinkedIn and Google+, likewise, have two of the older demographics among the most popular social networks.
Tumblr & Pinterest
Tumblr, a blogging platform had the highest percentage of users earning $18K or under. This is likely down to their target market; the teenage to young adult generation. Pinterest on the other hand, is a lot more balanced between the users earning under $18K and those earning $18-$37K.
Besides telling your friends and family (word of mouth), there are many companies that can help you build your social media following, such as Boost Social Media (http://boostsocialmedia.net). These companies can help grow your potential client base often faster than you can personally.
Making money in social media boils down to:
- Have a good product or service to sell
- Post often and make sure no more than 1 in 4 are sales related
- Build your list
