What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks. Social Media describes the space overall, and covers the activities around social interaction, content, videos, images and audio exposure.

What can Social Media Marketing do for me?

There are a number of areas in which SMM can benefit you directly and indirectly:

Website traffic
Page views
Ad exposure
Positive Brand Association
Reputation Management
Business development
Broad Customer reach

Using social media today is vital because of the ease of broader and faster communication with more people as well as supporting search engine marketing objectives. If targeted properly you can convert traffic well as long as you are following proper social etiquette. See below some of the tips we suggest when using social media sites.

It’s not about you (initially)
When first starting out in social media sites find ways to help others. Try to limit talking about yourself. This is probably one of the most important points when beginning. When you are first building your profile ensure that your are spending most of your time providing help. Then you can begin to open up and let people know what you do. The help you provide to others will come back to benefit you later.

Contribute quality content and replies
The more you are able to provide quality content, the more you will be known as an expert in your subject. In social sites community is the number one feature but quality content is always going to be the thing that sets you apart from others.

Connect with those who can help
As you learn who the movers and shakers are, reach out to them. Don’t be afraid to begin dialog with those who can help you reach your goals. Ensure that you are polite, sincere, and honest. You might be surprised at where these traits will take you today.

Stop, Look and Listen
Do plenty of reading and you will learn what people want, what they desire. Position yourself correctly and benefit tremendously from this information.

Everybody loves video
Everywhere you look today, video is leading the pack. Take some time and create (or have created) some videos for your company. They could be about almost anything but should try not to do any direct selling. It is better to create humor, controversy, or quirky stuff. Put your URL at the end of the video and allow the viewer to come at their leisure.

Find small communities and join them
There are undoubtedly small social communities that are specific and/or relevant to your business. By joining these communities you can have your voice heard a little louder because there are less people to shout over. As previously stated ensure that anything you "say" or provide in the way of content is high quality. In smaller communities you will also find it easier to communicate with the top players and influencers in your niche.

Take it easy, Rome wasn’t built in a day
Pick one or two resources to begin with and start building your profile over time. Don’t overextend yourself. Remember, slow and steady wins the race. If you have employees you can even outsource some of this work to move along a little faster. There is a lot of manual labor involved in social media marketing, but you don’t have to go crazy with it. Make sure to ask friends to vote or comment on your postings, befriend others, and remember, no spam. Make intelligent posts and don’t let your employees post from the same location (IP Address). The submission(s) could be rejected, and worst case scenario, your account blocked or suspended.

Below I have listed some of the sites I use for social media marketing several of my own blogs and sites. They are in no particular order and this is not an exhaustive list. Take some time to visit the sites and see where you feel most comfortable and then begin building your profile.

1. Digg – Digg.com is one of the and most well known social bookmarking sites. To use it you submit your news article into a specific category. People then have the opportunity to “digg it” which in effect is a popularity vote on how much they like your article.
2. Propeller – Propeller.com is similar to Digg in the respect that it allows people to vote on your post. The more votes you have the better people like your article.
3. StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon.com lets visitors bookmark your site (or you can and should bookmark your own) in a category that is specific to your pages, image or video. Visitors to StumbleUpon can then give you a thumbs up, or thumbs down as they review those items. Just like the two previous sites it becomes a popularity contest. The more thumbs ups you have or the more reviews you get from legitimate users, the better your chances you have of new visitors coming to your site.
4. Technorati – Technorati.com is a blog authority site. People who have blogs can register, create a profile and claim their blog. Visitors to Technorati can also search for news and related blogs on that site. Technorati ranks blogs based on uses an authority based model in ranking websites. In their case this means that the higher the number of blogs linking to your site, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.
5. Reddit – Reddit.com – With Reddit all you need to do is register and start submitting posts or images. I have done especially well using Reddit.com. My blog receives a lot of visitors that find us through them.
6. 6. Del.icio.us – Del.icio.us is top ranked site that allows users to bookmark items and then organize those bookmarks via categories. You can create tags to help you better organize your bookmarks and it also allows others to find you since anyone can click on a tag and find sites that use those tags.

Hopefully this article has given you a little insight into the power and effectiveness of social media marketing and why your business needs it.

Virtual Marketing, LLC is a Colorado based Internet Marketing company that is experienced in all areas of online marketing. You may contact us for a free internet marketing consultation at any time without obligation or pressure.