Social Media Marketing for Business

Social media marketing is no longer just a successful novelty, but a powerful medium that is changing the way the world communicates. Its power stems from crowd-sourced communities like wikis, blogs, online bookmarking and social voting sites, all of which allow the instant sharing of information between people with related interests.

Participants in these effervescent communities can expand their networks, advertise their company and/or skills, as well as receive recommendations and referrals from current and former clients. This is true because social networking sites aggregate web surfers who share common passions and views, resulting in a tight, reliable group of friends or colleagues who are connected by virtual means. Consequently, when a blogger or member from such groups makes positive comments on your company or endorses your statements, this generates “word of mouse” promotion for your business.

If so inclined, social media marketers can build their own fan base on social media sites. This can be accomplished by becoming an authority, opinion-leader, niche researcher, mentor or clever commenter. By building relationships in relevant, appropriate communities, marketers can attract more prospective customers, which will ultimately lead to more profits.

Note: Although social media marketing appears to be an easy solution, companies should stay away from building fake profiles to praise their firm (unless you’re doing this for clear humorous purposes), as this would likely to hurt the business’ reputation.

Online social networks are no longer a kids game

Social media sites are booming all around the Internet and do not apply solely to specific industries.

The current most active communities are those that allow shared content and information, e. g., Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace, Squidoo, Tagged and Friendster. Sites that let users bookmark links and/or vote for them, like Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg are also popular.

Traffic to social media sites increased by an astounding 774% between 2006 and 2007, as reported by a comScore study. According to the Pew Internet Study, around 50 million U.S. residents read blogs and an huge number of adults are becoming more and more active in the social media universe.

See this Wikipedia entry for a comprehensive compilation of social media and networking communities.

Selecting your social billboards

The social media arena offers a number of opportunities to small business owners. Similar to several search engine marketing practices, social media marketing isn’t too expensive, but it does demand time and willingness to:

a) find sites

b) produce and track content

c) monitor hits and leads

d) improve tactics to achieve better results

e) rinse and repeat until you get where you want

The following is a list of effective actions to get you started. As you familiarize yourself with the social media world, you’ll find more ways to reach your desired audience. Make sure to offer valuable contributions instead of focusing purely at self-promotion, as social media marketing is most effective when the focus is on helping your group.

1. Join a group formed by people who are similar to your typical customers.

When studying the profiles, forums and posts of an online group, it is easy to learn what the members are interested in, where they live and other basic demographics. After spotting a group that represents your business’ desired clientele, you’ll be able to catch the members’ attention in various ways.

For example, Rob Spees runs an LED Sign business from his office in Denver, CO.  His company has a network of dealers located in 100 or more cities throughout the United States.  When the distributors have featured inventory on hand they post ads to the local Craigslist highlighting the featured items.  At any given time the distributors may be selling signs through Craigslist in approximately 100 cities throughout the country, making sure that his posts reference the company website.  This approach gets great results.  In an average month, Factory Direct LED will receive about 30,000 visitors to his website, primarily driven by Craigslist.  This is his main form of Internet advertising, followed by GoogleBase, OutdoorBillboard.com, OTX and a few others..

“It is a great advertising medium that allows us to reach customers across the country for free.  The only investment in our Craigslist advertising campaign is the time it takes to manage the listings.  When you consider that we get about 1,000 visitors a day for about one hour of work, the ROI is phenomenal,” said Spees.

2. Leave comments on popular blogs in your niche.

Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere. By mid-2007 almost 100 million blogs were being written, according to the popular blog search engine Technorati. Start reading and commenting on a few blogs that relate to your industry. You can find such blogs via Technorati or by visiting professional association and/or trade publication sites that will provide links, as well as site recommendations.

Remember to only leave comments that match the blog’s topic, style, audience and policies and be careful not to offend anyone or generate a negative reaction.

3. Invest in viral video creation.

Nowadays, web videos are an inexpensive, accessible and easy to distribute media. Create a short (2-3 minutes) video presenting or explaining your site, business, services or industry. When complete, upload your video to YouTube, MySpace or other video sharing sites and direct visitors to your homepage. When you link your videos to your profile pages on social bookmarking sites, you will build a small group of connections that search engines will be able detect. Increased site traffic is crucial to generating more business.

4. Sign up with one or more business-oriented networking sites.

This may or may not work for you and it will depend on the products/services you promote and how you develop relationships inside these communities. If you are a PR professional or consultant, professional networking sites can help you find clients. LinkedIn, Facebook, ZoomInfo and Xing are great places to start.

5. Start a blog.

The hardest thing about blogging is building an audience and finding the motivation to produce strong content on a regular basis (always linking to your firm’s site, naturally). Read this guide on how to launch a blog.

It may be best to try some of the above listed tactics before launching a blog unless you are already driving significant traffic to your site. Be sure to first familiarize yourself with the social media environment and then you will be more prepared to make the most out of your blog.

The last tip, and probably the most important one for getting started with social media marketing is to ADD VALUE to your community, rather than trying to shove it down someone’s throat.  You will find that if you give first, you will make friends, grow your network and build your brand.  It takes time but the investment is well worth the effort.

In social media communities, if you give you will receive.