by: Tony Eldridge

source: http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com/2010/07/importance-of-social-networking-to.html

With a title like The Importance Of Social Networking To Authors And Professionals, you could expect to have a book, or volumes written to cover all the ways social media has become an indispensable tool for marketing your business. Well, I am not going to write a book here, but I am going to share one unexpected benefit of having a presence on social media sites that I learned over the last few weeks.

As many of you know, this is the first post for me in a few weeks. I had a string of illnesses hit the family and the death of my uncle in Indiana. Every now and then, circumstances arise that cause you to put all nonessential activities on hold so you can devote full attention to those circumstances.

That’s what I did for the last few weeks. Yet because I had a presence grounded in social networking, I was able to take care of some important personal needs without falling off the face of the earth. I received warm wishes on a number of sites and followers were able to know I would be away from blogging for a while.

While I was “away”, things happened that I expected. My traffic slowed down considerably. When you pause your posts, then this is a logical expectation. In fact, one thing you can do to grow your traffic and presence over the long haul is to continue to give good content.

But some unexpected things happened as well:

1. I continued to get followers on Facebook, Twitter, and on my blog which are the three main areas of internet presence that I personally focus on. These followers came at a steady clip. I believe that if the time I was away continued, the frequency of new followers would go down. But still, I was surprised at the robust activity of followers for me being away as long as I was away.
2. Not only that, comments on past blog posts continued to come. With hundreds of posts that give advice to people about marketing their book, my blog is starting to become a searchable resource that has rich relevant content for people. The search engines are also constantly delivering results with my past blog posts for people looking for the content I have.
3. My mailing lists continue to grow. People are still signing up for my free mailing lists, even though I have not sent out an update in a few weeks. Because I have built in some automated interaction, my absence has not hurt me for the few weeks I have been away. In my free Conducting Twitter Contest mailing lists, I have set it up to deliver a series of 10 lessons to people who want to learn how to conduct a twitter contest. In my free Video Tips Newsletter, I instantly give away 7 free video tips when people sign up for the list. This means that they have content to go through for a while as a reward for signing up even before the next video gets to them.

In the last few weeks, I learned the importance of cultivating a great social networking presence while I was able. I also realized the value in consistently creating good content over time. In doing so, it has rewarded me when I needed to step away and focus on personal issues. And the great thing about it is that it was all waiting for me when I was ready to return.

If you are just starting to build your social networking presence, take heart. What you are doing now is investing for the long term. That’s something that buying an ad can never do for you. If you are not seeing the results that you want immediately, don’t worry, they’ll be there soon. You just need to be committed to building your presence for the long haul.

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I have one request of you. I have entered a video contest that honors our men and women in the military. Regardless of how you feel about our wars, I know that most of you separate that issue with the people who serve. Take a look at my video entitled, “Compassionate Strength.” It’s a video that shows our soldiers interacting with Iraqi children.

The videos do not have a link directly to them, so you may have to do a little searching to find mine. Also, you will quickly see that someone has gone to great lengths to try to rate all videos as a 1 star. Please don’t let that throw you. My guess is that it’s someone who has entered the contest and thinks that this will help his/her video. It seems that if someone starts to get some good ratings, it’s not long before a bunch of 1 stars lowers the rating on the video.

C’est la vie

Tony Eldridge

Forney, TX, United States

Tony Eldridge author of the action/adventure book, The Samson Effect, that Clive Cussler calls a “first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure.” He also share his book marketing tips with fellow authors through his blog and through his free weekly video marketing tips for authors. You can follow him on Twitter @TonyEldridge

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