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[S658]Social Media Plain English

by Emily Leach, Emi

The ‘hoopla' is about creating relationships with website visitors from all over the world and getting your message out instantly when you need to … and have people actually listen to it! The concept isn't much different than how e-mail marketing was suppose to work, in that you would e-mail a message to people that were genuinely interested and they would listen.

Imagine having a following of 400 people that actually want to read tips, tricks, product updates, sales or any other pertinent information pertaining to your industry. And better yet, they may take that information and easily pass it on to their followers! It is quite possible to touch thousands of people with one tweet on twitter.com (more about this tactic below).

The trick to successful Social media updates is two-fold; you must create both a personal and professional relationship with your friends / followers and your posts need to be valuable, captivating or personal. Let me put it this way, treat your Social Media community as your friends and share fun personal stuff so they can get to know you. It needs to be a good balance of about 60% professional posts and 40% personal posts.
I'll expand with some post examples:

Here is a fun personal post that doesn't digress but let's my followers learn a little bit about me:

“@emilyleach is enjoying the break in hot temperature to do some work on my sailboat”

Here is an example of a professional post:

“@emilyleach is wondering if facebook is updating its homepage? embedded url after”

Another fantastic tip for your posts is to ask a question; like “how do you use facebook?”, or “what is your favorite way to spend a rainy day?”. This is unlimited in the information you can get in return and use as marketing material for your business. I would recommend once a week posting a direct question that will help you understand your following audience.

The biggest mistake I see in the implementation of Social Media is hitting the ground pounding out a sales pitch, no interaction, just sales pitch after sales pitch. Would you want to see that? Then don't do it, just remember this process isn't fast in most cases.

Another great way to learn how to use Social Media is to spend a little bit of time each day just reading the posts of your friends / followers and see what sounds interesting to you. If you are using twitter.com then look for posts that have the RT in front of the post. This stands for “re-tweet”, which means that this person ran across a post they found interesting or valuable and “re-tweeted” it so their followers could see it. That is how messages can go viral.

Also, make sure to promote your Social Media accounts on your webpage, business card, brochures and even your e-mail signature. This venue is still very new to some and expected by others, embrace it!

Reuters has invested $7 million in Pluck, the world's biggest blog syndication network, called BlogBurst. BlogBurst connects newspapers and other media sites to 2,800 selected blogs, helping traditional media supplement their journalism with blog viewpoints, says the official announcement.

Web logs, orblogs, have become a major source of commentary and reader feedback on the Internet. Traditional media have increasingly turned to blogs for insight and analysis, says Reuters.

If you're still wondering whether a blog could be a good media relation and PR tool, perhaps this is the final push you need to make blogs part of your Internet marketing strategy.

Of course Reuters won't be indexing just any blog. "Selected blogs" is the key phrase here.
Technorati indexes millions of blogs and the number doubles every 6 months. Pluck syndicates 2,800.

In real estate the mantra is location, location, location. You need to think content, content, content.They want blogs that offer insight and analysis--interesting content their readers will want to consume.

Keep in mind the eMarketer findings on why people read blogs--the number one reason is, "To get news and information I can't find elsewhere." Provide that in your blog as part of your Internet Marketing Strategy
and you'll have a good chance of making the cut.

Article Source : marketing mix advertising

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Both Emily Leach & -- -- are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Emily Leach has sinced written about articles on various topics from Work From Home, Software and Marketing. Emily Leach is a contributing author for PathNet Technologies with over 8 years of experience in website design, Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing. PathNet Technologies specializes in creating and implementing online marketing strategies t. Emily Leach's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.

-- -- has sinced written about articles on various topics from . Sally Falkow is President of Expansion Plus, Inc., and author of Website Marketing Strategy Ebook. She is an authority on Internet Marketing and search engine optimization strategies. For more information, visit. -- --'s top article . to your Favourites.