Best Business Expert

Social media – from Facebook to Twitter and everything in between – does have value for businesses if used correctly. Companies need to find the right audience and deliver high value messages to them, but they need to do more: Social media is about engagement, not JUST marketing. Therefore, businesses using social media need to interact with their audience at increasingly deeper levels. In yesterday’s business, it was enough to interact with a customer over the phone when they were ready to buy. Today, businesses need to build relationships with customers that are deeper and longer lasting: In Twitter, this means reading and retweeting what your prospects are saying. In Facebook, this means "liking" their statuses, commenting on photos, sharing links, and more.

But businesses need to drive that engagement further. Twitter and Facebook aren’t a panacea. They are entry points for prospects and customers to meet you. But you can engage them in other ways.

One way is with Slinkset. Slinkset’s claim is that they allow you to create a social news site. But this claim falls far short of the opportunities they provide. On their website they describe several other possibilities: Slinkset gives businesses the opportunity to create a link blog. They give businesses the opportunity to create a site where users can share links back and forth. They let users write ideas that readers can vote up or down. So, you can have people voting on feature requests. In fact, FourHourWorkWeek creator Tim Ferris uses Slinkset to invite readers to vote on topics they want him talking about in his conference and in his blog. And, users can use Slinkset as an internal repository of research.

This is a great way to engage your audience. A Slinkset page is extremely easy to set up (it took me less than 15 seconds) and it’s configurable enough for many uses. In fact, here are a few more uses that Slinkset doesn’t mention:

* You can add feeds so it is like a personal RSS reader
* Add custom sidebar and Google Analytics to track viewership
* Create multiple categories – "clients", "portfolio", "feeds" and use this site as your main site.
* Position your business as an expert by collecting industry content
* Add value to clients by creating individual sites for each of them and gathering information for them
* Use Slinkset as a sort-of "link-sharing intranet" for your business
* Create polls and find out what your audience is really thinking

It’s easy to create a customized site with a unique URL, unique sidebar, multiple categories, voting, comments, and more.

Slinkset is a powerful website that gives users some exciting opportunities to engage their audience and grow their business. Drive readers from Twitter and Facebook to Slinkset to involve them in deeper engagement.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

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