Introduction to social media marketing
Social media marketing for business involves using websites such as
Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare, to grow your business online.
Business owners can choose to connect with friends, peers, and
potential customers while increasing their social media interaction.
If you canaccess the Internet, chances are you have already been
exposed to the concept. Social Media Marketing, or SMM, as it is
sometimes called, is the latest attempt by Internet businesses and
marketers to reach targetedaudiences.
Social media marketing is a great way to connect with your customers
whether it is online or offline. Many choose to hold contests to
attract their target customers while others use it to find joint
venture partners to combine marketing efforts. SMM programscan focus
their attention on different promotional aspects of business. This is
accomplished through one or more techniques, such as direct
advertising, public relations, personal promotions, and other
advertising techniques that all have basically one thing incommon.
Using social media marketing to promote services and products on
social media websites, in hopes of connecting with their target
customers.
Another aspect of SMM is social media advertising which allows a
business owner to explore their marketing efforts via social
mediawebsites using tools such asFacebook Ads. It can be used locally
and globally to reach target customers. For example, a business owner
can use Facebook fan pages locally and could receive high return on
their investment when they showtheirads toward their target audience.
When businesses start creating fan pages and adding content on social
media sites, targeted customers tend to interact favorably with
websites that have become familiar to them. Your business can be
easily recognized by your targeted customer when your branding message
reaches them and drawsthem in. Using your Facebook fan page is away
to reach your target customer and it can help you brand your business
online. Using blog posts and messages onTwitter to post information
aboutyour business' products or services is a great way to reach your
target customer too.
All of these techniques are examples of the technological version of
word of mouth, and is proving to be very effective. Using social media
websites can help instill a sense of loyalty with your target
customers. Another area that SMM has reached is cellphones with mobile
marketing. As popular websites continue to expand, targeted customers
are visiting websites using their cell phones and other mobile
devices. This opens up a whole new market of Internet users worldwide.
How social media is working
When a user of a social media website discovers your story andlikes
it, they have the option to shareit 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 bringsignificant [inbound links]. Those inbound
links will directly bring your site visits and indirectly helpyour SEO
.
When using social media marketingthe 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
Smart SEOs love 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 headlineto link
back to your site
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 isthat
it shows you what people are searching for. Many is the social media
marketerwho goes to Wordtracker’s Keyword Question Tool to look
forinspiration.
Smart social media marketers love keyword research.
Social media is Bigger than TV, radio, newspapers, magazines andbooks
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 tobeing talkedto) and choose for themselves what
they see and read. Social media isa 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 fakea conversation andyou
can’t automate it.
We’ll now have a quick look at four gorillas of the social media
jungle – Facebook , Twitter , linkidin, orkut and digg
Facebook is the biggest social sitewith over 250 million users.
Facebook is the biggest social sitewith over 250 million users. It
took Google ten years to reach 50 million users – something Facebook
achieved in just 19 months.
Facebook is the world’s online scrapbook and meeting place in one.
Friends, customers, stars, fans, and anyone who crashes the party use
Facebook to stay in touch, swap photos, pay homage and talk to each
other.
Facebook is viral by default. For example, if I post and comment ona
photo, my ‘friends’ will all see itontheir Facebook pages. Then if
any of them comment on my photo, then their comment, my photo and my
comment will all be seen by their friends. With one post, I can start
a conversation with my friends and all my friends’ friends. That’s
powerful.
If you have a large network on Facebook and talk about something
interesting enough or present a Facebook application (like a game or a
quiz) that userslike, then it can spread across the internet.
Twitter might be the ultimate networking site
Twitter is a microblogging site on which each post is no more than 140
characters long. Friends, colleagues, admirers and the interested all
‘follow’ each other and can read each others’ posts.
The result is a collection of thousands of different conversations and
mini monologues. This can seem like a mad mess but that chaos islike
the hum of chatter at a lively party - narrow your focus and you find
that people are amusing each other, helping each other, sharingideas,
making connectionsand doing business
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