Advantages of Social Media

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Social Media although still in its infancy stage, it is here to stay. Whether you are a big company, small company, home-based business owners or just wanting to start a mini-blog-shop, you will want to learn about how to market your products and services through the channel of Social Media.

Though Social Media can be used to build brand awareness, list building, relationship building and seo, but not many know the true advantage of Social Media. So, I decided to post the real advantages of social media right here in my blog post. But don’t believe every single word that is stated below, you may have to use your own judgment to see whether does it really fit into your own marketing campaign.

The number one advantage of using Social Media is you can use it to do a group survey before pushing out your own products. You may have heard about a survey group. This group is a group of people where they come together pull from the general public and answer a few survey question pertaining to the products or services that you want to launch. This type of survey group, combining with Social Media is easily achievable using Facebook apps or a Facebook Group. And not to mention, these will allow your followers to generate buzz and you may have the survey done free of charge or at least at a very low fees.

The second advantage of using Social Media is you can hold contest easily. If you are a small business owners or a home-based business owners, using Social Media to launch your contest, will create buzz around you or your products and services. This is a low cost marketing campaign and if wanted, can scale up to a big campaign where your follow will either RT or create buzz about this contest. Ive seen some home-based business using Twitter to full effect to tied in their online contest with their facebook page.

The third advantage of using Social Media is to boost your SEO or organic listing advantage. You see, search engine are starting to index those pages in social media sites like twitter, facebook and you tube. At time of writing this post, Facebook is using Bing to show search result on their site, while Google is using Social Search by displaying twitter on their search engine.

As you can see, the above are some of the many advantages of using Social Media. You may consider using anyone of the above in conjunction with your marketing campaign.

Tags: advantages of social media, advantages of using social media, Social Media Marketing

Gear Up Your Site For Social Media Marketing

The year 2006 saw the emergence of social media. If you are engaged in operating a website, you must realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traffic.
You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new form of interactions in more and more sites and they may have an expectation of the same from your site also.
If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus this year should be on the social aspects of your site.
Social media use technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offer social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features.
The central theme of these sites is user generated contents used for sharing among the end-users. The social aspects of these sites are to allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests.
You don’t have to change your site completely within a month or so to take advantages of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally through out the year and you will be on your way to meet these new challenges.
The first step is to declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don’t like to deal with unknowns. Create an About Us page and list your achievements and skills.
Create a MySpace page and link your bio in the About Us page to the MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of these new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services.
Install a free blog software and start publishing at least one article in your blog. Provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like delicious. This is done by providing an action button for each article in your site. The action button takes users to the submission page of the bookmarking site.
Also, provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to digg. Digg is a popular news ranking site. A well dugg article will bring thousands of visitors to your site.
Provide a forum at your site for users to discuss your products and services. Don’t delete negative comments because they provide insights into the improvements needed to serve your visitors better. However, censor hate speeches and meaningless bantering. Register your forum at BoardTracker. BoardTracker is a forum search engine.
If you are offering products, allow users to review and rate your products. This will help you in inventory management because you may want to discontinue low rated products.
Provide RSS feeds for your new products, blogs, forum postings, etc. An RSS feed provides teasers of your contents. Users will use RSS readers to scan your teasers and visit your site for more information if the teasers draw their attentions.
Publish all your feeds at feedburner. Feedburner provides media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They also provide an advertising network for your feeds. If you have quality contents, you will be able to monetize your contents using their services.
Create short how-to or new product videos and post these videos in social video sharing sites like YouTube, Google video. Provide a few start and end frames in these videos to introduce your site with your site url. Post these videos using catchy titles, teasing descriptions, and appropriate tags to make them discoverable.
Provide embedded links to your posted videos in your site. This will save your bandwidth and storage space because the videos reside in the video sharing sites.
Besides videos, use social photo sharing sites like Flickr to share pictures related to contents in your site. Use the same title, description and tag techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.
Provide a Send to Friend feature for all products and services you offer. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail.
For starter, Yahoo provides a service called Action Buttons (search for Yahoo Action Buttons) that add links to your website for users to share, save, and blog about your website. The Yahoo action buttons use delicious for social bookmarking, and Yahoo blog site for blogging. It also has a print feature.
The social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and bring in profound changes to web surfers’ experiences. It is the right time for implementing features that will make your site social media friendly. Also, using marketing techniques that utilize popular social media sites, you will be able to bring traffic to your site.

Tags: Social Media Marketing, Social Video

The Advantages of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has come a long way in the past few years. Social media marketing companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have become so expansive that they attract visitors in the millions. It is estimated that visitors watch over 100 million YouTube videos per day. There are more than 30 million active Facebook users, and over 19 million visitors to Twitter. So what exactly is “social media marketing”, and what are some of its advantages?Simply put, social media marketing is a “rendezvous” of multiple online communities, with one goal in mind: to generate exposure. This about it. There are millions of people interacting in these online communities, sharing ideas and opportunities, providing the perfect atmosphere for larger corporations to increase their exposure and attract prospective customers, ultimately perpetuating a cycle of increasing revenue.By allowing supporters of a company the authority to promote their products, an individual is provided compensation for advertising and promoting a product, through various online mediums. Here’s how it happens: someone works as a representative of a company. As a representative, he/she will get paid a fixed rate of X for going onto online forums and interacting with other individuals on messageboards, promoting a certain product. As a result, whoever is a part of that particular online community will get exposure to the company and its products, and they may become a customer. If they do, they may recommend the brand to friends and family. If they do not, they may recommend the brand anyway – the point is, the company is getting exposure, from people, to people.When was the last time you saw a commercial for a product that you suspected was “too good to be true.” You probably did not pay any attention to it, and flipped the channel. What if that same product was advertised on an online forum or blog, by someone who has used the product, and SWORE by it? People are more impressionable when they get a firsthand opinion from someone who does not stand to directly benefit. Many online sales reps aren’t paid. Those “unofficial” reps are still very much heard, and they are much more numerous.This is just one example of social media marketing, but it clearly illustrates its advantages: low costs and higher yields, greater exposure to further establish a company and distinguish it amongst others, and generating overall publicity at the cellular level, so to speak.Ali Hussain2K Computer Solutionshttp://2kcomputersolutions.com

Tags: Advantages, internet marketing, social media, Social Media Marketing

Why Subscribers and Community-Building Are Vital to Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

If you want your social media marketing campaign and online brand to flourish, you must build a powerful community of subscribers, a.k.a. fans.  Subscribers are a key ingredient to the success of popular websites because they allow you to further the reach of your online communications. Here are some of the top reasons why building a subscriber base is such a vital component of your social media marketing success. 

RSS Feed Users Are Often Web Publishers Themselves:

Did you know that eleven percent or less of web users know how to use RSS?  It makes sense that those who are savvy enough to use RSS are also the ones who produce and share information on the web.  When you build your RSS subscribers, you are forming relationships with influential people who are the movers and shakers of the web.  As long as you do a great job of providing quality content that is worth spreading, your subscribers are bound to help you out by getting your message to more people, who may in turn spread your message even further. 

Subscribers Build Community:

The communities of social media are what attract users.  Compelling communities that flourish attract more people and make sites worth visiting.  For example, as the community on Facebook grew and attracted people from all walks of life, people were slowly drawn away from Myspace and moved over to Facebook. 

The More Subscribers You Have, the More Inbound Links You Get:

As you grow your subscriber base, an increasing number of them will consider you as a source of linkable content.  Many web publishers are constantly on the hunt for great content that they can link to or refer to in their own posts.  If you consistently provide high quality content, they will look to you as a resource.  The more times your content is linked to, the more SEO benefits you will get from link juice.  You can accomplish this simply by making an effort to constantly provide great content.  The occasional link bait wouldn’t hurt either. 

Your Subscribers Will Motivate You to Produce Better Content:

The more you grow your subscriber base, the more feedback you will receive about your content.  The feedback you get will enable you to learn more about your niche and how you can serve your subscribers better.  When you know that your reach is growing, you will inevitably make a greater effort to produce excellent content that gets people talking.  As a result, you will improve your work in many aspects and become an authority in your niche. 

Social Proofing Benefits:

Subscribers serve as social proofing.  When new visitors to your site see that you have lots of subscribers/fans, they are more likely to believe that your site is worth visiting and subscribing to.  When new visitors see your subscriber list, they will give you the time of day and be more likely to join your community right then and there. 

Less Reliance on Traditional PR:

Traditional PR methods such as pitching to the media and other bloggers will no longer be a necessity if you have a large subscriber base.  When you grow your subscriber base, you will see increasing returns for your communications.  Media coverage will come naturally, without you having to solicit it. 

No matter what type of online business you have, you will be in a better position than your competitors if you build a specific audience around your content.  When you build that audience and connect with them on a personal level, it takes your social media marketing campaign up a notch, enabling you to grow your online brand. 

How to Grow Your Subscriber Base:

Now that you understand why it is so important for you to grow your online subscriber base, here are a few tips on how you can accomplish the task.  First off, you must create content that gets people’s attention. It must have networking built into it and encourage people to share it with others.  Your content must also contain multiple hooks to get more visitors to join.  Great content is usually the biggest pull but you should also use other methods to attract new subscribers. 

Make sure your content is focused on your niche.  Your goal should be to consistently meet the expectations of your subscribers.  People are going to visit your site expecting a certain type of content so try not to go off topic too much and you will build a stronger, more tight-knit community. 

Surely there are plenty of other communities in your niche already.  In order to attract more subscribers, study the existing communities and try to do things differently from them.  When you focus on topics or details that existing communities in your niche aren’t touching upon, you can achieve online growth much more quickly. 

Tags: Internet Marketing Services India, Social Media Marketing

Improve your Social Media Marketing In Four Easy Steps

Internet Marketers from numerous sectors of the industry are flocking to social media marketing as a means to enhance online exposure and traffic generation.  These four easy steps are a solid foundation for any beginner who’s looking to capitalize on social media.

1.Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy

Including content features such as quick buttons to “add to digg” is just one way to make the process of page tagging easier.  Also make sure your pages have a list of relevant tags and suggested notes for a hyperlink.  This is key since those links will appear automatically when someone tags a site.  You should allow for social bookmarking, not just on your homepage but also on subsequent pages wherever content is posted.

2. Become a User Resource

Seek to enhance the overall value to users by adding outbound hyperlinks that lead to other marketers pages.  When done correctly, you present yourself as a non-bias leader and information source.  This helps social media optimization when others link to your social site and tag is as helpful.  Overtime, your content will become more relevant to large search engines.

3. Reward Helpful Users

The most valuable social media participants are those who actively influence a given community.  They seek out opportunities to assist others by contributing your experience or expertise.  In return, try to elevate them by promoting their business or brand to your following.  A brief email or direct message describing your sincere appreciation and belief in their contribution can go along way in building online relationships.

4. Participate in Content Creation

Social media is a two-way street.  Don’t just rely on receiving information other community members.  Reciprocate by adding value through free advice, recommendations or tools have you.  You’ll find that certain content naturally spreads socially regardless of the industry or product.  Whether it is creating widgets, making people laugh, or writing a term paper, it can be all be accomplished socially.  Know what type of content can work for you and create it.

Conclusion

While the packaging of social media may be in a constant state of flux, these four pervading principles are good rules of thumb by which to operate online.  Remember that text content is still paramount in optimization, however, integrating good content with a more personal and social element is a winning combination.

Tags: blogging, bookmarking, dubli, linkability, mashup, Micro-blogging, MLM, networking marketing, Social Media Marketing, tagging, twitter

Social Media Marketing is Attracting Offline Interest

As social media marketing continues to grow in popularity online it has managed to capture the attention of the offline community as well. In many boardrooms, more serious consideration is being given to social marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy.The phenomenal success this type of internet advertising has achieved is hard to argue or ignore.Current marketing strategies still find ‘conventional’ advertising approaches being utilized such as television, radio and print. However with the cost efficient and highly effective channels online social media offers these ‘conventional’ offline methods are quickly becoming outdated. The only hurdle new online strategies seem to now face for offline application is good old fashion management skepticism.Here is what likely can be expected in the not too distant future regarding the offline business community’s adaptation to online marketing strategies.Offline Marketing Budgets at PresentAt present time there is little evidence of any significant spending by the mainstream offline business community on any type of internet advertising. It is inevitable however that the recognition of the effectiveness and cost efficiencies of marketing online is soon forthcoming in this area.Witnessing the recent failures of many long time business giants due in part to their own marketing inefficiencies will only serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the business community. The aftermath of the recent economic downturn will only result in accelerating the shift of marketing strategies to the more effective and efficient avenues available online.Increase in Online SpendingAs offline businesses begin to shift their advertising spending towards the internet social marketing will get much attention due to the viral nature of this particular method. Marketing online differs from traditional methods insofar as the consumer seeks out information on their own as opposed to having it presented to them. With that said the need for content, and lots of it, exists and must be supplied by the marketer to fill this need. This is crucial for the relationship building that is required to make this type of online marketing approach work. Online Specialist Will Be HiredWhether its video, audio, or text the supplied content will inform, entertain, and provoke thought in an effort to capture the attention and loyalty of the online viewer.Sooner rather than later specialist for content development will have to be added to the staffs of offline businesses involved in online social marketing.Ad copy and other messages created will be designed to catch viewers attention, initiate and maintain interest, develop trust and loyalty, and make product offers. This type of internet advertising is based more upon ‘relationship marketing’ as opposed to the ‘hard selling techniques’ associated with conventional offline marketing. The Need for Public Relations will DiminishNow that more emphasis is placed on searching the internet for breaking news there will be less need for conventional public relation tactics to ‘create awareness.’ The content developed and supplied to the internet will more than fill this gap resulting in cost savings and increased communication efficiencies.Online Marketing Research will be EmphasizedBy utilizing the give and take capabilities of web 2.0 marketing techniques the ability to get valued customer feedback can easily be accomplished. This cost effective and highly efficient means of collecting valuable input online will be a very significant benefit for research and development.As a result offline efforts to collect similar data will be de-emphasized and regarded now as more cumbersome due to the cost and efforts required.Social media marketing, as it stands today, continues to demonstrate new efficiencies that increase the effectiveness of communicating with the online consumer. Its popularity and acceptance can no longer be dismissed as a short term phase but rather needs to be recognized for what it is, the evolution of consumer marketing. This will result in a greater acceptance towards using online social media as a permanent fixture in a company’s overall marketing strategy.

Tags: internet advertising, marketing strategies, marketing strategy, social marketing, social media, Social Media Marketing

Relationship Marketing-Social Media Marketing

Relationship marketing is the process of attracting, maintaining, and developing the best relationship with targeted people. Successful relationship marketing requires relationship commitments and trusts.Social Media Marketing is a place for establishing long term relationship marketing.Social media marketing can bring tremendous value to those who know how to leverage it. Social media marketing is fast growing internet community collaboration, especially after Web 2.0 application revolution (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) where million of people make relationship-some for just communication reasons but the majority for marketing purposes. Business owners are little bit skeptic about loosing privacy or misunderstanding that they have to be experts in order to use social media websites. On another hand, online marketers are growing their businesses pretty successfully. You want to expand your business to the next level? You better start marketing and building relationship right now. If you don’t, your competition will. If you don’t have a time for business visibility and finding new clients, than what kind of business you are running?Whispering about your business is not an option but loud talking and demonstrating, buzzing, branding. Before you become loud talker you have to be prepared to offer something valuable, real value even if it is a “little secret”. That “little secret” will build a trust and relationship.While value (content) attracts the audience to you, it is not enough to get most people to take action. Once you gain trust people will follow. At that point you have to learn how to motivate people to take action. That’s what a conversion is. To put it in more convenient terms: You have to learn how to close. The best way to motivate people to take action is copywriting.It determines whether or not people decide to…•    Read your ads•    Click on your ads•    Opt in to your email list•    Read your subject lines and open your emails•    Read past the first paragraph of your emails•    Click on the links in your emails•    Read your articles or blog posts•    Watch your videos (and continue watching them)•    Ultimately buy your productCopywriting is basically what moves the whole process along. It makes sure that a prospect goes smoothly from point A to point Z without getting stuck, lost or distracted along the way.The whole process of creating your business, optimizing and advertising is in reality copywriting.Social media is an ideal space for making use of your copywriting skills.Be mindful and strategic with using copywriting. Start with moderate approach to develop relationship or better friendship. Exchange thoughts about everything else just not business. Eventually your friends will start asking question about your business and that is a beginning of your business relationship and growth.

While you are gathering ideas how to attract market, make successful relationship, first check out this article to see if your website is properly optimized as a primary Traffic generator. Social medial marketing is actually additional method of gathering more traffics and sales.

Tags: Marketing, Relationship, Relationship Marketing, social media, Social Media Marketing

Time to Get Organized With Your Social Media Marketing

Should is a hard word to stomach. Often we’ll tell ourselves “I should do that… ” or “That should be on my to do list.” When it comes to Social Media Marketing, the shoulds are overwhelming. You should be on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook, you should be on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter, you should be posting on Twitter. What, you haven’t set up a Digg.com account? Well, you should…
Most of us get so overwhelmed, that we choose to do nothing. Seems like a bad solution. Let’s take a different approach to Social Media Marketing. I promise there’s not a should in the bunch.
Use the 80/20 Rule to Cut Through the Crap
The 80/20 rule teaches us that 80% of results stem from 20% of our actions. Whenever we talk about Social Media Marketing, the 80/20 rule always comes up. Why? Because so many of the options for in social media are a waste of time.
The 20% (Business Builders)
?Finding great forums to post work
?Writing quality articles about your subject
?Researching great tools to automate your submissions (hint, we discuss them a lot in this blog)
?Guest blogging on great sites
The 80% (Time Wasters)
?Following people on twitter to boost your numbers
?Collecting endless Facebook friends
?Getting caught up in angry battles with forum trolls
?Spending hours looking at Digg.com articles and responding to silly comments
Getting Things Done
GTD is an amazing book by David Allen. If you haven’t read it yet, you’re losing ground to people who have. If you haven’t read it in a while, consider picking it up. There’s always a gem or two that you’ve missed.
The heart of GTD is:
1. Get all of the stuff out of your head and into a list.
2. Decide what the next action is on each item
3. Batch items to make them more efficient (i.e. Make all your phone calls at once, set a time to respond to email, etc.)
4. Once a week, reevaluate your list to make decisions about what’s important and what can be dropped.
Let’s point this thinking towards Social Media Marketing
1. Make a list of everything you’d like to do. Get it out of your head and onto paper.
2. Go through the list and decide if the task is an 80 or a 20. Take a big black marker and cross through the 80’s until you’re down to a handful of tasks that will really make an impact.
3. Now batch these tasks.
Batching Social Media Tasks
A great way to batch social media tasks is with Firefox. Open all of the tabs for a given task and use Firefox to save the set of tabs into a single bookmark (Bookmarks -> Bookmark all Tabs). We use this for a couple of sets:
? Forums: Save all of the common forums you’ve found into a single tab. Then go through and systematically post your article as a new topic in each forum
? Responses: Open all of your social pages and respond to comments in a single sitting.
? Idea Generation: Save your favorite idea generating blogs. Now, when it’s time to write articles, you can scan the headlines and gather ideas all at once.
We batch lots of things to save time and energy. One you’ve learned the idea of batching, you’ll find all sorts of ways to make it work for you.
If it’s worth doing, it’s Worth Re-Evaluating
Just because you’ve been doing something for months, doesn’t mean it’s the best use of your time. Quickly you’ll realize that some things you do generate more buzz, leads, and business than others. It’s useful to schedule a formal time each month to think through all of the things you’ve done and decide what’s working and what’s not. We try to block out time at the end of every month to make sure what we’re doing works.
If you liked this article, please tell your friends about it. If you really liked it, feel free to publish it on your blog or website (please don’t forget to mention www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog as the original source).

Tags: 80/20, Digg.com, Getting Things Done, internet marketing, online marketing, Social Media Marketing

Elements of Social Media Marketing

Social media, like networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, are changing the way we act online. Having a functional website no longer puts you one step ahead of everyone else, because most businesses now appreciate that an online presence is a necessity and not an advantage. Social media marketing, however, allows smaller businesses to build their online presence for very little cost whilst still reaching a substantial audience.

Here are some things to consider when putting together a social media marketing strategy:

• It is easy to see social mediasites like voting from the candidates’ perspective; the more ballots you have in the box the more likely you are to succeed. But it’s more important to consider who you’re voting for, or whether you want to vote at all. Social media marketing requires you to be selective, choosing which sites will gain you the most interest rather than striving to reach everyone.

• Not all social media sites will be suitable for your business. Although it’s tempting to show your face on as many sites as possible, it is more useful to do your research and see which sites are best for you. If your business sells books, then it might be better opting for a social media site which focuses on blogging, allowing you to post regular reviews and new releases.

• Don’t use social media networking sites unless you plan on networking. If you plan on promoting your product(s) as soon as you’ve signed up, you will get no responses because no one will care to invest any time in what you have to say. Try adding new friends and building on the personal relationships you have with prospective clients before you try selling to them. Social media marketing, more than any other form form of marketing, requires you to focus on social aspects such as comments, discussion and regular updates or posts.

• If you are using news submission sites such as Digg, it is important to be active. Vote and comment on other people’s content if you want them to do the same. You are more likely to have your stuff read and bumped if people see that you have taken the time to do the same. Social media marketing is likely to take up time, but if you dedicate certain amounts of time each week to keeping up it up to date, then you are more likely to see results.

• Make sure your headline is catchy and your content flows well. Whilst the content does need to be informative, it also needs to be concise as most internet users won’t be willing to spend more than ten minutes reading an news article or blog post. Also consider the type of site you are on, as some sites might require a different style of writing than others (formal/informal, tech-savvy/layman’s terms etc). Whilst social media marketing is more informal than most other forms of marketing, the content still needs to be interesting.

http://www.design-logix.co.uk/blog/blog-entry/elements_of_social_media_marketing

Tags: New Media, Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing 2

Last month we introduced the idea of social media marketing, this month we’re going to give you some solid pointers about what to do and what not to do.
Do:
Understand social media marketing. Successful social media marketing isn’t about the tools, it’s about the people. So, as we said last month know who you are – it’s like giving them a business card but a profile says so much more and people interact with people who show they are people and not “business bots.” Different sites have different display options ranging from say the complete design option at Ecademy to the ’straightjacket’ of LinkedIn.
Practice that well known BNI mantra “giver’s gain”. Successful social media marketing is about listening, participating and giving value before expecting anything in return. At the very least when you first contact with someone write them a short note saying “Do let me know if there is ever anything I can do to help” and mean it. Answer people’s questions in your network too. I asked a simple question on LinkedIn just recently – ‘Can anyone recommend a good sales management trainer? We are promoting and want to give some good training.’ Within days I had 33 answers most of which were excellent. Naturally I feel quite well disposed to those people that answered.
Commit time and resources. It’s like any marketing; skimp and you will fail. If it succeeds then know how you will scale it. This is generally the ‘killer’.
Almost all of us are pretty much ‘time short’, finding it difficult to fit in what we have to do. Social media does take some time – it’s like a meeting except virtual and meetings take time. So accept it and move on if you can’t commit the time. Like all marketing and sales ‘techniques’ not all work for everyone. If you do commit the work out how you will deal with increasing scale if you are succesful. If I asked a question a day and got 33 answers to each I’d soon be dealing with 165 extra pieces of information a week!
Be transparent or you will alienate your connections. It’s generally pretty obvious what types of commercial messages are allowed or reasonable. Remember, as in all networking, you are not attempting to sell directly so don’t. And please treat others as you would like to be treated. People who don’t know you will form an opinion of you based on what you do and say and you want that impression to be a posItive one. Do not assume that those within your networking group share your beliefs – cultural, religious, business or personal.
Listen. Remember Epictetus [the Roman (Greek-born) slave & Stoic philosopher, 55 AD - 135 AD] “We have two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk the less.” In virtual world the same applies even though we have 2 eyes and 2 hands for typing! It’s a conversation. Knowing what people think gives the opportunity to improve or to explain so don’t just ‘jump in with all guns blazing’.
Welcome participation and feedback. If you are not comfortable with that don’t do it, people can be more direct than they are face to face. Racial slurs, unfair criticisms and blatant abuse have no place in social media channels but simply because people are more anonymous they do, unfortunately, occur. Don’t get drawn in to this yourself; read any of your own comments to see if they are too emotional and how they may be perceived before you actually post them.
Know your objectives. Who are your target audience and where do they hang out? Is your prime goal building relationships? If so why? Are you looking for joint ventures, suppliers, prospects, customers or something else? Are you trying to improve awareness, connect with experts or drive site traffic? What are you going to offer and how are you going to participate? How often are you going to participate? How are you going to test and track your efforts? Remember social media marketing is more like public relations than direct marketing. Cause and effect can be difficult to link.
Do not:
Try to control ‘the message’. Once it’s out there people will inevitably mash it up, stretch it, pull it and reshape it according to their interests. You can protect logos, copyright and intellectual property but little else.
Be fake. People know. They just do.
Break the rules. Understand what is acceptable in any particular community so you can ’speak like a native’. Every community has unwritten as well as written guidelines for behaviour that can only be understood by observing and participating.
Be pushy. Adverts and sales pitches are often taboo. Remember it’s a social environment and asking for opinions and help and providing information is more likely to work.
Create silos. Work across all the platforms of which you are a member so that you don’t have totally conflicting messages in different communities – it just causes confusion.
Having understood the rules where do you start?
Register with the bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon so that you can research hot topics and get ideas.
Now register for the site(s) that will give you the right exposure and conversational reach.
Once you’ve registered:
Understand the tools available in that community. How to set up a good profile, join or start clubs, use blogs and any marketplace, set up events etc etc.
Only by understanding the tools available can you make best use of the site.
Join active groups (activity is more important than size) that fit your target audience and become a trusted and well known user. Remember that other users can spot those who are just joining to promote their own stories and pollute the system. So submit things that you think will appeal and be very careful about mixing in too much of your own content.
Connect. Reach out to the influencers in your community, be polite, honest, sincere, and you’d be amazed what they will do for you. Be patient – social media marketing takes time. Be opportunistic and flexible – you never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly adjust and learn.
Work out what will appeal to people and what will help you and then consider setting up your own club or group. But only do it if you are committed. An active club takes effort and people remember if you leave them high and dry.
Quality content is absolutely crucial. People don’t watch irrelevant or badly produced garbage unless it’s so bad it becomes viral. Content with plain boring presentation or lots of adverts stands a much higher chance of failure than average content with remarkable presentation. Try to use enticing titles for your content, never lie and always back up your facts by citing your sources. Video consumption is growing fast. Create a “how to…” or “top tips…” videos. In generating all content, remember #1 rule: no direct selling. Humour, controversy and weird stuff works very well, keep that in mind – don’t be afraid to test.
Optimise your social media marketing. The term ’social media optimization’ was first used by Rohit Bhargava. His five rules for social media optimization are:
- Increase your linkability – get others to link to your site
- Make tagging and bookmarking easy – quick tag buttons for example
- Reward inbound links – list and reciprocate links
- Help your content travel – put it on other sites
Analytics: open an Google analytics account, a Technorati account for your blog and a Tubemogul account for your videos (there are other analytics providers than these too). Look at your analytics and track referring domains and review traffic movements regularly so that you can see what works.
So, there you are, as Aleksandr would say: “simples”.

Tags: Social Media Marketing