Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to promote a product, service or content through the participation in various social media networks.

What are the benefits?
The SMM goals will be different for every business, however most will involve some form of viral marketing to build an idea or brand awareness, increase traffic, and ultimately sell a product or service.

Social media can be a great way to have your website promoted by word-of-mouth. If you can get people to talk about and recommend your services/products to their peers, it is more powerful than any marketing you can buy.

The Killer Strategy:

1. Blog Marketing

1.1) Create a blog

1.2) Submit your blog at Technorati etc & other blog directories

1.3) Join Mybloglog

1.4) Update your blog with relevant content. Don't use your blog as a way to communicate marketing messages, instead use it to interact with your peers.

1.5) Interact with other blogs - posting comments on other relevant blogs is a very simple form of social networking. It's also a good way to get some extra visitors your site or blog. Interact, join in on conversations - don't get seen as a social spammer by visiting numerous places, dropping your name, and giving nothing back.

1.6) Micro-Blog! this is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. The main services include Twitter, Spoink and Plurk.

2. Social Networking

2.1) Create a profile on the following social network sites;

Facebook/Facebook Business
Bebo
Myspace
Squidoo
LinkedIn (b2b only)

2.2) Interact with users, make friends and communicate!

2.3) Update your profile on a regular basis, keep it relevant and useful to your visitors. This could be a monthly top ten list, breaking news or useful advice etc.

2.4) Create niche social networks & communities on Mixx, Ning, Squidoo & Flickr.

2.5) 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). Create highly relevant and linkworthy content, research what others are writing about, and connect with the top players and influencers.

2.6) Create 'Business Cards' on the following sites;

Naymz
Ziki
ClaimID
SuprGlu
LinkedIn

2.7) Help your Prospects; Answer questions and offer advice on reference sites such as;

Yahoo Groups
Google Groups
AOL Groups
MSN Groups
Topica EMail Lists
Kaboodle Groups
Eurekster
Tribe.net
Ning

2.8) Contribute to discussions on related forums;

3. Social Bookmarking

3.1) Add attractive content to your site. The content should be humorous, controversial or helpful and may include;

Breaking news (offer your opinion!)
Guides / tutorials
Interesting stories
Pictures
Videos (submit to Youtube, Tagged & Google Videos)
Statistics

3.2) Bookmark your new content: on the main social bookmarking sites as below (amongst others).

Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn
Digg
Reddit

3.3) Give something back - Bookmark other useful resources

4. Onpage Social Media Optimisation

4.1) Add an 'Email a Friend' link to all of your content pages.

4.2) Add an RSS Feed - RSS allows people to be notified every time new articles are added to your website so they can keep up to date with your content. Ask your developer to create some RSS code for your website and then put a link on all of your pages to the RSS code page. The link should be a small orange rectangle with the letters RSS in white.

4.3) Publish your RSS feeds at Feedburner to encourage distribution and interest.

4.4) Subscribe your RSS to Techcrunch, iGoogle, My Yahoo Web or other favorite RSS readers

4.5) Watch for changes in your industry (using Google Alerts) - be the first to comment and engage in your topic. First commenter's often get more visibility and traction.

4.6) Add a Forum - Having a Forum on your website is a great way of building a community around your subject area. Monitoring the forum will both give you a chance to understand what people are discussing and promote your expertise by adding your own comments.

The downside of a forum is it does need to be carefully managed. You need to allow people to make negative comments so they don't feel they are being censored, but you have to stamp out aggressive behaviour, personal insults, sp@m andmeaningless rubbish. This can be time-consuming work, so don't bother with a forum unless you have the time
to do it properly.

Non-technical people can pay to use vBulletin. More technical people can use a frëe opensource solution such as PHPBB. You can register your forum with BoardTracker to make it easier for people to find.

4.7) Contribute to discussions on related forums;

4.8) Add the 'Addthis' button to all pages of your site (www.addthis.com) so that users can easily bookmark your pages on their favourite social bookmarking sites.

5. Article Marketing & Online PR

5.1) Write relevant Articles & Press Releases that provide useful information to your prospects

5.2) Submit your releases to the major article directories.

5.3) Bookmark your article pages on the major social bookmarking sites.

6. Share Your Photos

If you have photos related to your subject area, post them on photo sharing websites such as Flikr and PhotoBucket. For example, if your website is about steam trains, take a camera to your next steam train show and post the pictures on these sites. People searching for steam train images are likely to try these sites. They can then follow the link on the photo to your website. P.S. Remember to include links back to your own site from the images.

7. Social Media Advertising

7.1) Create targeted ads to appear on blogs and social networks on socialspark.com and socialmedia.com & clickymedia.co.uk & facebook Ads

Search Engine Optimisation – why it works best with quality writing

Not so many years ago, there was a time when marketing relied on good copy in printed documents. It was when the written word had to have a long shelf life. Today, websites can be updated at any time from anywhere in the world and, consequently, sloppy writing has become the norm.

Attracting the attention of Google and other search engines is crucial for bringing visitors to your website. To achieve this effectively, Search Engine Optimised copy should run parallel with good website construction.

A competent website designer will know how to build a site so that it scores well in search engine rankings. Often, designers will set up “stalking” websites and pages that contain SEO-rich copy that is not meant to be read by the human eye but links through to the principal website’s Home Page.

Keywords

Probably the most crucial aspect of effective SEO copywriting is the density of key words. Key words are the most common words people type into Google when looking for a particular product or service.

A paragraph should be written to incorporate key words as early in the text as possible as search engines are more inclined to identify key words that are placed near the top of a page.

Ideally, website copy should have a key word ratio of about 7% and never more than 10% or search engines will punish your site for “spamming”; i.e. simply stuffing your copy with key words.

Keyphrases

Search engine optimised copy is more likely to achieve good search engine ratings by creating key phrases than by single key words. Key phrases are literally strings of words that people typically type into search engines.

A person searching for a steel bin or steel bins is more likely to type steel bin i.e. two single key words than type “steel bin” with quotation marks to create a phrase.

Enter steel bin or steel bins into Google and it produces about 370,000 results.

However, “steel bins” in quotation marks only returns 38,000 results, so by incorporating steel bins into a proper sentence (without quotation marks) it is recognised by search engines as a genuine phrase.

Misspelling

Allowing for people spelling words incorrectly is another way of attracting customers to your website.

Enter steal bin (two key words) into Google and it produces a whopping 4,180,000 results but enter “steal bins” in quotation marks and Google returns a mere 75 results.

In other words, incorporating steal bins as a phrase within your body copy, without it looking like a misspelling, can be very effective.

For example: ‘Steel bins supplied by Merlin Ward at these prices are a steal. Bins come in a combination of brushed steel bins, matt steel bins & etc’.

Misspelled key words that are commonly searched can add considerable value to your SEO copy. The trick is to use them without filling your web page with poor spelling!

Other areas of consideration for good SEO copy are: the overall number of words per page, especially the Home Page; keeping to one topic per page; paragraph headings; links to other pages; and page titles that succinctly summarise a page’s contents with just a few key words.

If your website copy incorporates good SEO practice and is managed by a competent website designer, it will attract more visitors to your site and turn “hits” into real business.

Ultimately, the golden rule for all website copy is that it must read well and that search engine optimisation should not detract from the overall marketing message.

By Merlin Ward - SEO Copywriter (www.merlinward.com)