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