SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

The benefits of a social media marketing campaign include: .....More Links—SMM campaigns can generate incoming links and result in higher rankings in organic search results. .....More Traffic—SMM campaigns can generate more traffic from profile pages, from links embedded in messages that travel virally throughout the social web, and from pages that rank high in search. .....More Brand Awareness—An SMM campaign can build more brand-awareness through visibility, online reputation and authority in the social media. .....Better “Legs”— If your message gets enough attention in the social media sphere, there’s a chance it will be picked up by other, more traditional media, such as mainstream news sites, newspapers, magazines and television. Think Perez Hilton or lonelygirl15. (Remember JenniCam?) SMM Strategies Most marketing strategies involve reaching the potential visitor at a distance, through advertising, email and other messaging. In SMM, you engage directly with your potential audience through existing social media, encouraging them to generate discussion about your content, your products or your services. SMM techniques include: .....Submitting a how-to article or tip sheet to a “voting” site like Digg and Reddit .....Bookmarking an article on sites like del.icio.us or ma.gnolia .....Uploading and tagging images up on Flickr, Photobucket, etc. .....Uploading videos to Yahoo! Video, iFilm, YouTube, etc. .....Establishing a business profile at a social media web site like MySpace or Facebook .....Developing your own widget that lets users spread your content on their own sites