Blog Update 4 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (SMM) on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Digg has exploded in the past year. But what exactly is it? And what’s in it for you? Let social media marketing expert and the man behind this blog gently introduce you to the subject and perhaps change your marketing life.

Early last year police closed Liverpool St Station in the UK after 13,000 people ‘flash mobbed’ the station, mimicking a TV advert for a phone company by all dancing to music playing on their MP3s. The idea for the flash mob was spread on facebook.

It doesn’t matter if the flash mob idea was planned by professional marketers or happened ‘organically’. The original advert inspired it, people loved it enough to travel across the country to take part, and Facebook allowed it to go viral. Oh, and T-Mobile got a lot of cheap marketing. Everybody was happy (even the policemen were smiling).

How Social Media Works: 

When a user of a social media website discovers your story and likes it, they have the option to share it with their friends. This can cause the story to 'go viral' and be shared with even more people. This can deliver hundreds of thousands of visitors, launch a website or new product and bring significant [inbound links]. Those inbound links will directly bring your site visits and indirectly help your SEO.
When using social media marketing the quality of your content is crucial, the better it is the more likely it will be passed around. We’ll be talking about how to create such ‘sticky’ content in a future article.
Stunning content will still need a push to get going, the bigger your network on these social media sites the better. Your network can help you give it that initial push, increasing the chance of the story going viral.
Direct marketing will reduce the chances of a piece of web content going viral. People do not want to be sold to, the initial social media marketing push should be more about the conversation than the sale. A more aggressive sales angle can be added later, once the social media push has ended.

Keywords & SEO in Social Media:

Your social media marketing can support your search engine optimization (SEO) by including target keywords in headlines. Then when your story goes viral and other sites use your headline to link back to your site – Bingo! - you get keyword-rich inbound text links.

Smart SEOs love social media.

Keyword research can also be a great way to find ideas for stories that people want to read. One of the points of keyword research is that it shows you what people are searching for. Many is the social media marketer who goes to Wordtracker’s Keyword Question Tool to look for inspiration.
Smart social media marketers love keyword research.

Bigger than TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books:

18-34 year olds now spend 4.3 times more time on social media than with TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books combined. This is happening because social media allows users to talk to each other (which they prefer to being talked to) and choose for themselves what they see and read. Social media is a many-to-many conversation and not a one-to-many communication.
This conversational aspect of social media is crucial to understanding social media marketing because you can’t fake a conversation and you can’t automate it.

Social media is a very important part of marketing online in getting your websites and messages heard. The great thing about social media nowadays is you can leverage your fan base to help you create authority to your visitors. Take the tweet and Facebook like buttons for example; people nowadays associate the use of these buttons as a vote of confidence almost like a friend is recommending it. This is a great way for you to leverage your marketing even further online as social networks like Facebook and Twitter can be very powerful just because the sheer amounts of users who use these sites and connect with one another.

Conclusion:

Social media can be very powerful aspect of your online marketing if you are making use of the free tools out there that allow you to take advantage of these outlets. You should be primarily focusing your social media marketing on sites such as Facebook and Twitter as they present the best opportunity to leverage yourself amongst people in your niche market. By implementing social media correctly you can have others marketing your product or service for you!

The next few week we will dive into the 3 main Social Media networks out there and I will explain each.  I cannot express how important Social Media is now a days for Marketers.  Twitter, Facebook, Google+ are the top three.  I might do a few mini-posts about StumbleUpon, Digg, and the few others.  You need to get involved in all of them!  Whether you have a business and your own product, or you are an Affiliate Marketer trying to promote your product links, it's ideal to get on-board with Social Media.


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