Facebook

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’re familiar with the social networking giant Facebook, which was the first of its kind to carry social networking into the real world and get investors to see it as a business with potential. Facebook started with personal pages, which allow you and your (selected and approved) friends to view your profile and leave comments for you on your wall, but has expanded to include business pages. Companies are using these pages to extend their online presence into the social networking space.

What can businesses do with Facebook pages? Whether you have an e-commerce business or a bricks-and-mortar location, you want to create a profile of your business so that potential customers have an up-close look at what your business can do for them. In addition to the profile, fans of your business can leave a post or comment on your wall (or primary page), ask questions, seek out technical support, and share pictures of themselves using your product. Businesses use Facebook as a place to run contests, seek out information or research, and attract more customers by garnering more “likes.” Facebook is also an ideal place to promote video content and other presentations in an effort to get your company in the face of those who count most — your customers. One effective way to use video on Facebook is to broadcast live using the Facebook Live feature. This feature allows you to live-stream video directly from your Facebook page. In fact, your followers are sent a notification that you are live in an effort to get fans to visit your page and watch in the moment. Perhaps our favorite part of Facebook Live is that the fans who are watching you can comment and ask questions while you are broadcasting — and you can answer your fans. Talk about a great way to interact with your potential customers and get them involved in your brand!

Use Facebook Live for product demonstrations, tips, or to conduct interesting interviews. Resist the urge to turn your video time into an “As Seen On TV”–style commercial broadcast from your Facebook page. Fans would much rather see something useful or entertaining than being hit in the face with an obvious sales pitch.

When you’re ready to do some serious selling through Facebook, there are two main options. First, you can add CTAs (calls to actions) to your page and posts that allow people to get more information about a product or service. For example, you may want to promote an annual conference or fundraising event and would use a CTA button with the text “Register.” Or, you might promote the use of a new mobile app your business created, and would use a CTA button with the text “Download App” or “Use App.” This option is also helpful if you have a type of offering that requires more sales assistance than simply dropping a product into a shopping cart. For instance, you might offer a free trial and use a CTA button with the text “Try for Free,” which takes the user to a page explaining the free trial. If you are taking a traditional e-commerce approach, you can set up a Facebook Store as one of your tabs from within your page. A Facebook Store lets fans buy products directly from your page. The only catch is that you need to connect your store to an online shopping cart or e-commerce provider, such as Shopify.

In addition to reading Book 6 to see how to buy and run an ad and other ways to use Facebook as a marketing tool, you might want to check out Facebook Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition, by Andrea Vahl.

Because deleting a Facebook page is extremely tedious, you should be prepared to always keep an eye on the posts. And should anything negative get posted on your wall, you want to be prepared with a policy or set of procedures in place to route and resolve bad comments. Otherwise, one or two negative comments that never get resolved could cost you lots of customers.

Twitter

Twitter exploded onto the social networking scene as a place to have real-time conversations. The object of Twitter is to build followers and have conversations — in 140 characters or less. After you sign up for this free web-based service, you can send as many (short) messages as you like.

Although it comes as a surprise to many, Twitter is a useful tool for business. For example, search functions make it easy to identify potential followers (and possible customers) based on your use of key search words. And, thanks to link-shortening tools, such as Bit.ly (www.bit.ly), it’s easy to add a link back to your site to promote content such as blog posts, videos, and presentations, or to highlight your services and products. Using Twitter as a traffic-generating tool is one of the benefits it offers to your website. You can also use hash tags (the number or pound sign on your computer keyboard) to follow discussions on key phrases, promote key phrases, or allow others to discuss a topic relating to your business. Simply put the hash tag in front of the term you want to use and then tweet it. For example, #socialmedia will bring up all Twitter comments on that subject.

Like Facebook, Twitter offers a promotional opportunity with paid advertising, called promoted tweets. The ad program lets you target a particular audience on Twitter (segmented by keywords used in user profiles and in tweets, and by hash tags and popular trending topics, for example). Your promoted tweet is labeled as such at the bottom of the tweet and is then inserted into the top of your target audience’s Twitter stream.

Twitter has also started offering another way to advertise by using Twitter cards. You add code to your website that allows images to be displayed with certain tweets. Or you can use a lead generation Twitter card, which lets you send tweets with images and allow a Twitter user to get a coupon or download an e-book directly from your tweet (without having to leave Twitter).

Another opportunity for shopping from Twitter was pioneered by Amazon. Using the hash tag #AmazonCart, you can take advantage of special product offerings from Amazon’s Twitter account and then add the product directly to your Amazon shopping cart — without leaving Twitter. The products you add to your Amazon account will be in your shopping cart and ready for check-out when you want to complete the purchase. This type of social media shopping helped pave the way for other brands, big and small, to sell from within a tweet. Twitter added a Buy button feature that lets you add a Buy button to any tweet. The button is set up and managed through your shopping cart or social commerce platform, like Shopify and Big Commerce.

Unlike Facebook posts, which stay prominently featured on a page for a while, posts on Twitter rotate quickly through your followers’ feeds. To ensure that as many followers as possible see your tweets, you want to post similar tweets several times or pin a tweet to the top of your profile so that it’s the first tweet profile visitors see, even if the tweet was sent two days prior.

Twitter doesn’t like you to tweet the exact message over and over again, so change your tweet message slightly each time you send it out.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the only (if not the only) social networking sites developed with businesses in mind. The site was also quick to develop a plan to earn money through advertising revenues and paid membership levels. It’s also been successful at growing and maintaining sales.

Although these details are nice to know, you’re probably more interested in how LinkedIn can help you. LinkedIn is like a virtual Rolodex (filled with your professional contacts) that’s been moved online and expanded to include everything about you and your profession (everything from a résumé to your interests and most recent careers). Your first step in using the site is to create a user profile. (Your LinkedIn profile is scanned by all the major search engines.) Then you start building your network by adding people you know who are already on LinkedIn and inviting other people on LinkedIn who you would like to meet and add to your network.

If you’re selling B2B (business to business), LinkedIn is an ideal social network for you. LinkedIn heavily promotes social selling, which is essentially finding and selling to customers through social media. It is continually updating its platform and tools to make it easy for you to sell or prospect in the platform. With LinkedIn, you have the opportunity to

• Expand your network through virtual introductions
• Post updates on projects you’re working on and events you’re attending
• Join groups with similar interests and participate in conversations
• Use your profile to help get found in search engines
• Use PDFs, PowerPoints, SlideShare presentations, and video to add to your profile information about your products or services
• Publish content to its Pulse platform, which is shared across the social network
• Promote events

Pinterest

Pinterest started out as just another social cataloging site (which we discuss at the end of this chapter). It's a collection of user-generated and user-shared images that members pin, or post, to personal boards — the virtual equivalent of posting something to a cork board. Pinterest has become one of the most popular image-sharing social networks. As a business or a blogger, your customers and readers can share images from your online store or blog directly to their Pinterest boards. In this way, your product images get shared across a huge network of Pinterest members. You can also add special tags to your images that include product information (such as price) and link back to your website so that people who see the pin can then buy the product. Pinterest only recently added Buyable Pins that allow Buy buttons to be placed within shared pins. This allows users to buy a pinned product without leaving Pinterest. Your shoppers use Apple Pay or a credit card to make the purchase from within Pinterest. One nice fact about selling through Pinterest is that it’s not just for typical products such as clothing or home décor — you can promote and sell books and other digital products, too. You can learn more about Buyable Pins at https://business.pinterest.com/en/buyable-pins.

Each of the social networks we discuss in this chapter can be connected directly to your website. How? Twitter and Facebook both have plug-ins or tools that let you post real-time feeds of your social networking accounts (or pages) on your site. For example, visitors can go to your main website and see a sidebar that contains the most recent comments posted on your Facebook wall and a real-time streaming Twitter feed. Look for instructions on Facebook and Twitter on how to grab some simple HTML code to place on your website to get things started. Most e-commerce solutions, blog platforms, and website builders provide the capability for you and customers to share information from your site to social media. Customers can share products, articles, reviews, videos, and just about anything else on your site.

Visual platforms

Similar to Pinterest, several other visual-based social media websites hold great potential as moneymakers. We provide more details on how to convert visual interest into currency, but first here’s a quick overview of these picture-perfect social platforms:

• Instagram (www.instagram.com): Instagram is social media platform that lets you post photos and short (15-second) videos. You can then share your images across your other social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. The twist that makes Instagram special is that it allows you to add special filters to your images to give them a more creative look. In other words, you can take a picture on your smartphone, upload it to Instagram, and then add a fun filter on top of the picture to give it a faded look, or change it to black-and-white, or make it look like it was a Polaroid picture taken in the 1970s. You can do the same to short video clips. Creative and entertaining people can build a following of thousands of fans and generate revenue from the platform through brand sponsorships and Instagram shops. Instagram boutiques are especially popular with 18- to 34-year-old women who like the instant gratification of seeing and immediately buying trendy clothes, shoes, and jewelry from the social media platform.

  Selling products from an Instagram boutique is much easier with the right tools. In addition to using hash tags that let users know products are for sale, there are lots of third-party resources available to help your buyers spot and purchase directly in Instagram, and to help you track sales. Get started with one of these tools: Have2HaveIt (https://have2have.it), Soldsie (www.soldsie.com), and Inselly (www.inselly.com).

• Snapchat (www.snapchat.com): Snapchat popped onto the social media scene as a now you see it, now you don’t app for sharing images. Images shared between friends on Snapchat disappear permanently in a few seconds. The non-permanency of shared content originally earned the social platform as a “sexting” service for teens (kids could share risqué images that disappeared quickly so there was seemingly little risk to the images showing up elsewhere). But the site overcame this image as a larger user base determined that those quickly disappearing messages actually made for a fun, entertaining experience. Today, Snapchat is valued at almost $20 billion and has more than 100 million users every day. Its largest segment of users, which make up nearly 50 percent, are those between the ages of 18 and 34 years old. If you want to target millennials and younger generations for your niche business, this is the place to be! Of course, the exact process of how to sell to Snapchat users is still evolving. Currently, you can take advantage of ads, sponsorships, and geofilters (which let Snapchatters engage with you at a specific event or location through these geographic specific filters). We’re betting it won’t be long before Snapchat figures out a creative way to let users share their stories and buy products in a snap!

Selling products in a visual social media platform is less about the product and more about showing off how the product looks on real people (from sellers to celebrities). Instagram and Snapchat users don’t want to see a picture of a product on a white background with a description and price. That’s boring! And, they can go to any online retailer and see the exact same image. Instead, these buyers want to see you wearing that cute coat while walking your adorable little dog; or they want to see how those dangly, shiny earrings catch the night light while you’re on a date dancing the night away. In other words, you’re selling a story, not just a product — but the story should be genuine and real. There’s a fine line between looking like an awesome person with a trendy handbag people want to know about and being a model in a carefully manufactured ad.

Depending on a single social media platform as a revenue generator is risky. This was demonstrated when Twitter abruptly announced the shuttering of Vine, its mobile video app. The decision left many content creators in a bind, but those making serious money from the social video stream really got hit hard. As with any type of business, it’s critical to diversify your revenue streams.

Vloggers and video gamers

Vlogger is the term used to describe people who blog through video, rather than only writing articles. Just as traditional bloggers created a business out of producing steady content and catching the eye of brands willing to pay for the blogger’s online influence, vloggers are following that same business model. And almost any topic is worthy of a vlog; from makeup and men’s fashion to fishing lures and skateboards, there’s probably an audience for it.

One of the early vlogger success stories is Elle Fowler, who started her popular YouTube channel, AllThatGlitters21 (www.youtube.com/allthatglitters21) way back in 2008. Her videos, focusing on fashion trends for young women, reach over 1.3 million subscribers and have logged nearly 200 million video views. She also has an extensive fan base of more than 300,000 followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Not bad! Her brand and her video channel continue to expand, and she even began vlogging on bridal content leading up to her marriage in 2016. She’s truly grown up on social media and has paved the way for many other young vloggers.

In addition to YouTube, you can make and share videos on Instagram and Snapchat, and possibly make money purely from the video content created in those channels. Even if you don’t use multiple social networks to create video, it’s worth sharing your visual content across the board and building influence in all the networks. Cross-channel promotion goes a long way to increasing your reach and income-making potential.

If you need more than a quick video to get your point across, and you happen to enjoy playing video games, Twitch.tv might be your ticket to a niche video business. Think of Twitch.tv (www.twitch.tv) as a mix of YouTube and ESPN, the cable sports channel. It’s similar to YouTube, in that Twitch is an online network that broadcasts video content, streamed live (you can prerecord, but that’s not the preference), and is all about video games — playing them, watching others play them, and discussing them. So, it’s sort of a sports network for the video game industry that includes the broadcast of e-sports (professional video gaming). One of the primary ways to make money on Twitch is through paid subscribers to your personal channel. Believe it or not, there are lots of eager fans who will pay recurring subscription fees to watch you play video games. The caveat is that you must either be really good at games and use the channel to show off your prowess and offer tips, or you must be entertaining (watching you play video games is fun or even comical). Twitch.tv launched in 2011, and it has more than 100 million users. Recognizing its huge potential, Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014, for $940 million in cash! Why not grab a (game) controller and get your cut of the earnings?

E-sports, along with amateur gaming, is a rapidly growing niche market, and Twitch.tv is the leader in the space. However, if you want an alternative, then consider trying YouTube Gaming (https://gaming.youtube.com), especially if you are already comfortable with YouTube as a video platform.

As with any trend, the online video phenomenon has the possibility of diminishing. But that’s no reason not to try it while it’s still hot. And don’t be afraid to use these trends as the basis for discovering the next big thing.

Instructional and premium content videos

YouTube has a lot of content. Although some of the most viral videos are usually quirky or funny, other types of video are doing well online. And when it comes to making a profit from videos, instructional videos are one way to fit the bill. Think of a how-to format that teaches someone how to do something, or a travel video that showcases popular vacation destinations and gives tips or suggestions when traveling. Corporate-style training videos, geared toward more professional endeavors, are also a good choice. If you prefer not to offer instructional or educational videos, but prefer to use your artistic eye to create short-form videos that show off locations, events, or other interesting imagery and graphics, there’s a market for that, too!

Lots of companies need video segments, or premium video content, to use in their own ads or website, but don’t have the in-house talent or budget to make their own videos. Instead, companies license the use of others’ videos and this opens the door for another way to make money on your work. Or, you may develop a scripted video series or some other special style of video series that fans want to watch — and are willing to pay to watch via subscription fees! At the end of the day, video is still content. And if you offer quality content that people seek out, it’s most likely content that sells.

Visual-based social media sites are extremely popular; and almost all social media sites encourage the use of images and videos in posts. The use of images can help a social media post get more engagement — the post is more likely not only to be seen but also to get liked, shared, or commented on by followers. This resulting need for visual content presents another moneymaking opportunity for you, not only with video, but also with any type of visual content, including original illustrations, images, photos, and even content that uses lots of graphics, such as infographics. If you can take good-quality photos or creative pictures, you can sell the rights for other companies and individuals to use those images. One place that promotes this service and connects amateur photographers with online buyers is Foap (www.foap.com). Check it out to see how you can trade your photos for dollars.

Although YouTube provides incredible traffic and moneymaking opportunities, getting your videos noticed can be tough with so much competition. However, you can use other video sites, such as the following sites that are quickly showing promise:

• Vimeo (www.vimeo.com): Vimeo is a hosted video service provider that offers an extensive number of tools, promotional assistance, revenue share program, and advertising options. It also lets you offer multiple subscription offers for streaming your videos to customers or fans. These revenue-making tools are available only through their Vimeo Pro account, which costs approximately $200 per month. Learn more about its On Demand program and see examples at www.vimeo.com/ondemand/startselling.
• Howcast (www.howcast.com): Specifically created for instructional video formats, if you want to offer how-to content through video, this is one of the top sites to help you share it and grow an audience. Just like its name suggests, Howcast hosts videos that are all how-to content. Whether you’re showing viewers how to do simple maintenance and care on their cars, offering household cleaning instructions, or showing off the best way to apply makeup, there is an audience waiting to view your video. To make money on this platform, you’ll need to sign up with Video Elephant (www.videoelephant.com), a content provider and monetizer specifically for video content. It gives you the tools needed to add money-making options to your video (like ads and revenue sharing), but it also provides a network (beyond Howcast) where you can license your video content to other companies, called publishers, in the Video Elephant network.
• DailyMotion (www.dailymotion.com): Based on how it hosts and delivers user-generated videos on its site, this site is perhaps the closest competitor of YouTube. The site gets over 120 million unique visitors monthly. DailyMotion offers three ways for you to make money. You can enroll in an affiliate-type program and earn money by sharing video links on your website or through your social media channels using DailyMotion’s special widget; or you can rent your videos (for use by others) on a subscription basis. Or as with YouTube, you can make money earning ad revenue with your videos. DailyMotion provides an easy view of your earnings and engagement statistics through its Revenue Analytics tool.

Building social influence for dollars

Now that you know about the different types of social media platforms and video networking sites, and can see some of the ways online entrepreneurs are cashing in on them. But you may be asking, how do you reach the point that you can capitalize on social commerce?

First, let’s recap the primary ways you can earn money through social media:

• Ad revenue: Earn money from showing ads to your followers. Depending on what type of social media platform you’re using, there may be limitations to how ads are delivered. For example, videos may include ads that show up inside the videos themselves; other social media sites, or even a blog, might have ads show up in your profile or alongside the content.
• Sponsorships: Brands pay you to sponsor, or be the highlighted advertiser of, your account for a limited period of time. Sponsorships can be for specific posts or videos, for e-mail distributions to your followers, or for the sponsorship of your entire social media account or profile.
• Brand account take-overs: If your influence is substantial, and you have a large community of fans and followers, brands may pay you to run their social media accounts for a few hours, or a full day. The idea is that your followers, as well as the brand’s customers, know you’re the one on their Instagram or Facebook account sharing photos and interacting with fans.
• Subscription services: Especially with video, fans are often willing to pay monthly fees to watch your video or view your content. This has lucrative earning potential because it is automatically recurring revenue. In other words, fans sign up once but their credit cards are auto-billed each month.
• Repackaging content: Reusing what you’ve already created is an efficient way to increase earnings. Whether you are reselling photos or segments of your video, or other types of content that you’ve previously used, you retain the copyright but give buyers a limited-use license. The license permits people to use content for a specified fee, and you determine the parameters for how and when the content is used, thus the term “limited use.”
• Selling direct: As with any online retailer, social commerce earnings add up when selling products or services through a social media platform.

Before you get significant traction earning money from one of these types of revenue streams, it’s important to have an audience that wants to be part of your community. You need social influence, or the ability to persuade others through your social media persona. In the examples we provided of social entrepreneurs and vlogging celebrities, you probably noticed that most all had several hundred thousand, if not millions, of fans and followers. That adds up to a lot of social influence. Your fans not only what to see you and watch what you do, but they also think your opinions are meaningful, especially when it comes to what products and services you use.

Is it necessary to have a large fan base in order to make money? That’s almost always the case (unless you are repackaging your content) or selling products directly. The real question is how many followers qualify as a large enough fan base for you to exchange views for dollars? That’s a tough question to answer because there’s no definitive number.

Some social influencers on Instagram have had as few as 1,000 followers before receiving interest from brands. And many Instagram influencers agree that the turning point for brand interest is somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 followers. For YouTube, and any other social platform, that number varies. Some of it is dependent upon the particular topic in which you specialize. The more niche, or specialized your content, the smaller the overall audience may be, and so a small number of followers may have a big impact.

Review sites

When was the last time you searched the Internet for product reviews before buying a specific product? Research shows that approximately 97 percent of online shoppers look to the Internet for recommendations and general product research before making a purchase. That’s one reason websites that focus on product reviews are so popular. Of course, review sites focus on more than products. You also find reviews on places and services, from restaurants to day spas.

Regardless of what they’re reviewing, these sites are yet another example of how social media influences behaviors — in this case, purchasing decisions. If you’re selling anything, online or off, frequenting these sites is a good idea for several reasons. First, you can easily discover what customers have to say about the products you sell (or about your business). Second, you have the opportunity to interact with new and existing customers and get in on the discussion. On the other hand, if you have an interest in a niche market, you might consider launching your own review site. This strategy is popular when earning money through affiliate marketing programs, which we discuss in detail in Book 4, Chapter 2. Here are a couple of existing review sites to check for ideas:

• Yelp (www.yelp.com): Boasting more than 132 million unique monthly visitors in 2014, Yelp features reviews of all types of products, services, and businesses, and also allows business owners to respond to reviews.
• CitySearch (www.citysearch.com): Focusing on more than 75,000 cities in the United States, CitySearch provides reviews for services, restaurants, and other venues. Like Yelp, CitySearch lets businesses respond to reviews. Two interesting features are its mobile application and the promotion of local deals of the day. As for income, you can become a contributor and developer through CitySearch’s CityGrid publishing program by using its SDK (software development kit). Find out how to participate and expand your network (and your revenue potential) by visiting http://developer.citygridmedia.com.

Many of the review sites, including CitySearch and Yelp, provide business owners with a free profile page. Taking the time to complete this quick overview of your business is a good promotional opportunity. In addition to providing details about your business type and location, you can use the profile page to post specials or coupons.

Social cataloging

Social cataloging sites are similar to a virtual catalog. You can identify images that mean something to you, group them in one place (sometimes called a board or collage), tag them, and promote them as things you like. In some cases, you can link product images directly to product pages, or make products available for sale from within the site, itself. Primarily these sites focus on clothing and home goods, so what you can sell or promote is limited to those categories.

Social cataloging sites have evolved in only a few years, going from offering a Pinterest-style wish list for fans to becoming legitimate online catalog sites filled with super active buyers. For example, Polyvore, one of the first social catalog sites, now boasts an average shopping cart (in-platform) value of $383; this is up from an average of $66 just two years prior! Polyvore’s average cart value, based on its 20 million active users, is larger than those on most traditional social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Whether or not you sell from these sites, another benefit is likely to come in the form of brand recognition and possible traffic referral to your site. Traffic from social cataloging sites could possibly provide enough eyeballs to generate ad revenue or affiliate-style commissions from product referrals.

Keep the following social cataloging sites on your radar:

• Polyvore (www.polyvore.com): Users create “sets” or collections of products curated and displayed to look like pages from a magazine. Clothing and home brands can set up a business profile and upload product images tagged with prices and descriptions, which can be shared by Polyvore users and purchased.
• Chictopia (www.chictopia.com): Users upload images of themselves wearing outfits from their favorite brands and offer links to buy those products. This community rewards users for engagement, such as liking photos, commenting, or sharing images. Reward points are traded for real products.
• Asos (www.asos.com): The fashion brand, Asos, acquired an existing social cataloging site (Fashion Finder). Users upload looks, or images of themselves wearing specific outfits, and share those images using the hash tag #asseenonme. There is also a marketplace where other brands make their products available for purchase.

As with any online community or social media platform, it’s important to understand who the audience is that frequents the site and ensure that it matches your target customer. For example, Asos is filled with community members who shop small, trendy boutiques (think, less well known and not as pricey), whereas Polyvore community members tend to shop for high-end designs, from clothing to furniture, and are willing to spend more. Similarly, while some or all of these social media sites and online communities may be new to you, most have been around for a long time and have experienced audience shifts. For example, Facebook has seen its younger users leave for Instagram.

As a social commerce business, it’s easy to get started on these social catalog sites. While the specific sign-up and promotional actions you take may vary by individual site, here are the four must-do steps to begin putting the social into e-commerce:

1. Join the community.

   The first step is to become part of the community — as a community member. Register (which may involve creating a personal profile) and begin exploring the site and getting comfortable with the way people interact and promote looks within the community.

2. Convert to a business profile.

   Once you understand how the site works from the perspective of a community member, the next step is to sign up as a business, if this option is available. For example, Polyvore allows you to add “business” to your profile, which unlocks the ability to add products and clipping tools that let users choose your products to share in their style sets. Other sites may allow you create a profile that describes your business, and link to your online store.

3. Upload your product descriptions.

   If the option exists, always upload products to the social catalog site so users can share the images. But even more important, add a short description (which also helps with search functionality to get your products found on the site). Include pricing as part of the description.

4. Engage with other users.

   Perhaps the most important step, other than becoming a community member, is actively spending time in the site interacting with other members. This means liking or commenting on others’ photos, following users, and even following other brands.

Presentation platforms

Plenty of community-based sites promote online socializing and sharing, but few of these networks, except LinkedIn, were created with businesses in mind. Given LinkedIn’s success, sites that target the business customers and also provide a real service might just have potential as serious revenue generators. Presentation platforms are technically sites that offer a tool for businesses to publish, share, and archive business presentations. For example, a sales pitch developed in PowerPoint could easily be posted and viewed (publicly or privately) using one of these platforms.

Why classify presentation platforms as an online community? As mentioned, the capability to share, comment on, and circulate your published presentations in a defined space makes it a natural fit as a community. Your next question probably revolves around how to make money with this type of community. One possibility is that you could build your own niche presentation community and implement paid membership levels, similar to LinkedIn. But why go to all that trouble?

Instead, as a user of an existing presentation platform, you can use it as a tool to increase brand recognition and create your own presentation channel. From there, it’s possible to capture leads (prospective customers!) and offer free or sample presentations as a way to send traffic to a site where your customers pay for access to more content. Not to mention, with the manner in which e-commerce is expanding to every corner of the online universe, we wouldn’t be surprised to see click-to-buy functionality added directly into these types of tools. Take a look at the following presentation platforms that already attract lots of viewers:

• SlideShare (www.slideshare.net): Offering a free account, SlideShare (now owned by LinkedIn) lets you post presentations developed in PowerPoint, as a PDF, or even as video — and generate leads from within your presentation. You increase the capabilities of this presentation network when you choose to upgrade to a Pro business account. Note that SlideShare is in the process of updating this program, so expect to see lots of changes and expanded options for generating revenue. SlideShare easily integrates with LinkedIn, which helps generate even more views.
• Prezi (www.prezi.com): This presentation platform lets you create more of an interactive presentation that users can zoom in and out of, for example. The tool is easy to use and makes your presentation more engaging and user-friendly. Prezi offers different levels of paid accounts ranging from approximately $5 per month to $20 per month.

Both communities offer the potential to make your online business more professional and visible. Although the money-making side of social networking sites and communities isn’t always obvious, explore the possibilities and get creative. The sky is the limit on how you use social networks for your online success.