I just recently attended a Social Media Marketing (SMM) seminar. I thought I already knew everything there was to know as I already have a blog, a LinkedIn page, and am a member of probably a hundred online community groups. Well, I was wrong. I will share with you some things that I learned.
What is it?
“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 is a shorter top level term that describes the space overall, and covers the activities around social interaction, content, videos, images and audio exposure.
Where to start?
Many of us are so excited about the technology and web that we forget key pieces to success: definition of business goals, objectives and overall process for execution. While you need to create the roadmap for your online business - you must certainly decide on what goals and resulting metrics you want to attain.
Social media marketing can help you increase the activity around these top goals:
Website traffic and user behavior
Conversion and sales tracking
Page views, ad exposure
Growing brand awareness
Creating a positive brand association and keeping it there
Business development and a broader customer reach
Your Top Social Media Starter Resources (not necessarily in order of importance):
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn
Flickr
Digg
Reddit
Technorati
Secondlife
Meneame
Newsvine
Some tips for effective social media marketing:
Tip #1 - Assistance: Limit talking about yourself. Provide ways to help others instead. This is probably the most important tip in the social media workplace. Say you are building your new del.icio.us profile, make sure to bookmark other useful resources. It’s about “them”, not “you”. Don’t forget this important rule!
Tip #2 - Process: Don’t become a “me too” - establish a process and goals for how to get there. Too many companies dive in too fast, with no real plan and end up with poor results or no results.
Tip #3 - Contribute: Be the one to create quality content. Studies show that people are reading much online, but a much smaller group is contributing content. This can mean good opportunities for you.
Tip #4 - Connect: Reach out to the influencers in your niche, be polite, honest, sincere, and you’d be amazed what brand advocates can do for you.
Tip #5 - Position: Position yourself in front of consumer's passions. It can and will create a powerful outcome for your brand.
Tip #6 - Blog: Make sure you have setup a blog. I use my blog to promote myself, my website, my services and my clients and would advise you to do the same.
Tip #7 - Links: Don’t be afraid to link out to other blogs and websites in general. Links are what search engines and users make good use of - and search engines would not survive without them.
Tip #8 - Videos: Video consumption is growing fast. Create a “how to…” or “top tips…” videos and submit to YouTube. It has wide reach, and you could have millions of people see it. For even wider distribution, you should try tubemogul.com or vidmetrix.com, tools to help automate. In generating all content, make sure to keep #1 rule in check. It’s fine to brand with a URL at the end of the video, but no direct selling. Humor, controversy and weird stuff works very well, keep that in mind - don’t be afraid to test.
Tip #9 - Technorati:You said you have a blog, right? Claim your blog at Technorati. This will ensure you are indexed in their search engines for blogs and updates are broadcast across the network, along with your own blog network updates. This happens behind the scenes from automatic “pings”.
Tip #10 - Analytics: Open an account from list below, use your brand name as identifier. This will establish your brand or company name, and not let anybody else assume or steal your personality so easily. Then, work with one or two from the list below to start, and don’t go too fast. Look at your web analytics and track referring domains and review traffic movements daily, weekly.
Tip #11 - Feeds/Research:Subscribe to feeds, and use iGoogle, My Yahoo Web or other favorite RSS readers. Watch for changes (use Google.com/alerts also), and be the first to comment and engage in your topic. First commenters often get more visibility and traction.
Tip #12 - MicroCommunities:Locate and join microcommunities - they are social communities that are relevant to your business. Some examples are education.com, nowpublic.com, travbuddy.com, gardenweb.com, shoetube.com, yelp.com and care2.com (non profits). Those are the perfect places for the “big fish in a small pond” rule. Create highly relevant and linkworthy content, research what others are writing about, and connect with the top players and influencers.
Tip #13 - Submit: Review the resources below, and consider building out profiles over time. If you submit content, make sure it’s useful, unique and that the title of your post stands out. Pick one or two resources to start, and don’t overextend yourself. Some of the top social marketers in the industry spend 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Make sure to ask friends to vote or comment on your postings, befriend others, but no spam. Make intelligent posts and do not have your company employees post from the same location (IP Address). The submissions will most likely be rejected, and worst case, your account blocked or suspended.
Tip #14 - Hosting: Have a good hosting provider to avoid any potential technical issues.
Tip #15 - Monitoring: If you want to save time monitoring across many resources within the social networks, try the new Yahoo Pipes, it’s a social monitoring desktop in a browser.
Tip #16 - Advertising:If you are an advertiser, you might want to check out socialspark.com and socialmedia.com.
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