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Organizations Using Some Form of Social Media Marketing. Source: Marketing Sherpa 2009
The Buzz is On! Nearly 80% of organizations, according to a 2009 Marketing Sherpa report, are using some form of social media marketing to reach their audience (see chart). According to Lloyd Salmons, first chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau social media council “Social media isn’t just about big networks like Facebook and MySpace, it’s about brands having conversations.”[1] What does this mean for your company, and how can you get started in the Social Media sphere?
Here is a brief primer on the different forms of Social Media, ideas for how your business can benefit from active engagement, and some suggestions for how to get started. Ask us for our Social Media Marketing Starter Kit if you think you’re ready to get underway or want to know more about what it would take to get started.
Social Networking
Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter are online communities where people can connect with others, share interests and ideas, and network with friends and colleagues. Initially aimed at simple networking and communication, many of the Social Networking sites have expanded their scope to include opportunities for advertising and brand promotion.
Benefits:
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Stay in touch with your customers – A quick, low-cost way to communicate regularly with your customers and keep your brand fresh in their minds. Once you do some networking and build up a following, these sites give you the opportunity to share valuable information on a regular basis. Each time you post a topic it shows up in their ‘Feed’ when they login to the social networking website.
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Build your brand (or blog) awareness – Whether you are trying to build your personal brand or the identity of your company, these sites present additional opportunities to reach new people and get more exposure. If you have a blog, Facebook allows for automatic importing of your blog feed so every time you post on your blog, it goes right to your Facebook profile and sends updates to your followers. Twitter allows you to send links in your messages that point to your blog posts or any other page on your website.
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Manage your online reputation – Google and other search engines index these profiles and may include them in search engine results when people search for your name and/or company. ‘Owning’ many search results for your name is a great preventative measure for controlling your reputation on the web.
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Network in your profession – LinkedIn allows you to network with other professionals around the country and become more of an authority in your field by responding to questions posed in groups.
Getting started is as easy as setting up a profile for your business. To keep it fresh and interesting, get in the habit of posting updates of interest to your audience – company happenings, industry news, events, etc. Be sure to keep your postings concise, and be sure there is real value for your followers. We can help you establish your profiles and coach you on how and what to post for updates.
Social News
Blogs, industry forums, contributed article sites/directories, YouTube. These sites “publish” user-generated content to a target audience with a measure of credibility and authority. The range of “authority” is broad – “silliest YouTube videos” on one end of the spectrum, and respected industry-expert bloggers on the other — but the goal of social news sites is to publish, inform, or entertain, much like traditional news media. They need a steady flow of good content and are always looking for new ideas.
Benefits:
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Improve your search rankings –Social News sites will often use contributed content, if they thinks it’s valuable to their readers. If you can supply high-quality content, seeded with keyword-rich links to your web pages, the search engines will count those links as important “votes” in their ranking criteria, helping your site to move up the Organic search rankings.
- Bring qualified leads to your site – Social News sites can draw large followings, and send more qualified visitors to your website.
- Enhance credibility for your brand – Besides helping your search rankings, the perceived authority of these sites will lend added credibility to your brand. The trick is to find sites that enjoy a good reputation with your target audience, as their established credibility can influence your audience in your favor.
- Build your authority and reputation — By engaging with bloggers and forums in your industry, you can start to build a reputation for yourself and your company in the social media sphere. Social News sites offer an excellent opportunity to “publish” valuable information, engage in industry conversations, and demonstrate your knowledge and authority on key topics.
Getting started. We recommend a long-term, well-paced approach to building links from Social News sites. The progress is incremental but the pay-off can be huge. The first step is to follow, read, and listen to what the influential “publishers” are saying. The next step is creating valuable content — press releases, articles, white papers, or just blog/forum entries – and offering it for their use. We can help you locate the best News Sites for your business, create and optimize high-quality content, and build incoming links to your webpages from the social news sites that matter to your audience.
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking sites include Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and many others. These sites allow viewers to bookmark their favorite webpages and share their bookmarks with friends. The sites then rank the most-bookmarked webpages and publish the list. If your content gets widely shared and well-bookmarked, it may climb to the “top 10” list on one of these sites, which will draw even more attention and traffic to your page. Often, the best way to be noticed initially is on a Social News site, where “bookmarkers” are often looking for new and interesting content to share with their friends.
Social bookmarks make your news travel fast
Benefits:
- Bring immediate attention to your site – Once news is bookmarked, word can travel fast and spread widely through sharing. Popular articles that make it to the top ranks of these sites can bring a flood of traffic and interest to your site within days – or hours. Be ready!
- Bring incoming links to your site – A more enduring benefit than short-lived traffic is the spread of links. Pages or articles that gain attention on social bookmarking sites are likely to be reprinted broadly – each time sending another link to your website, which search engines see as another vote to improve your ranking.
- Create a viral ‘buzz’ online – Like other forms of viral marketing, it’s often hard to tell what will make something “take off” and spread. If your content is informative, compelling, entertaining, or otherwise worthy of notice (and with a little luck thrown in), it’s possible to create a real “buzz” around a product or brand.
Getting started. It’s all about the content. The most popular forms of bookmarked content typically are lists (“Top 10…”, “Tips For…”, “How To…”, etc.), entertainment or humor, and other content that people like to share with friends or colleagues. We can help you create content to attract social bookmarks, and submit it to sites where bookmarkers are most likely to find it.
