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Your Social Media Marketing

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You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new form of interactions in more and more sites and they may have an expectation of the same from your site also.

If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus this year should be on the social aspects of your site.

Social media use technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offer social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features.

The central theme of these sites is user generated contents used for sharing among the end-users. The social aspects of these sites are to allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests.

You don't have to change your site completely within a month or so to take advantages of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally through out the year and you will be on your way to meet these new challenges.

The first step is to declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don't like to deal with unknowns. Create an About Us page and list your achievements and skills.

Create a MySpace page and link your bio in the About Us page to the MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of these new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services.

Install a free blog software and start publishing at least one article in your blog. Provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like delicious. This is done by providing an action button for each article in your site. The action button takes users to the submission page of the bookmarking site.

Also, provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to digg. Digg is a popular news ranking site. A well dugg article will bring thousands of visitors to your site.

Provide a forum at your site for users to discuss your products and services. Don't delete negative comments because they provide insights into the improvements needed to serve your visitors better. However, censor hate speeches and meaningless bantering. Register your forum at BoardTracker. BoardTracker is a forum search engine.

If you are offering products, allow users to review and rate your products. This will help you in inventory management because you may want to discontinue low rated products.

Provide RSS feeds for your new products, blogs, forum postings, etc. An RSS feed provides teasers of your contents. Users will use RSS readers to scan your teasers and visit your site for more information if the teasers draw their attentions.

Publish all your feeds at feedburner. Feedburner provides media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They also provide an advertising network for your feeds. If you have quality contents, you will be able to monetize your contents using their services.

Create short how-to or new product videos and post these videos in social video sharing sites like YouTube, Google video. Provide a few start and end frames in these videos to introduce your site with your site url. Post these videos using catchy titles, teasing descriptions, and appropriate tags to make them discoverable.

Provide embedded links to your posted videos in your site. This will save your bandwidth and storage space because the videos reside in the video sharing sites.

Besides videos, use social photo sharing sites like Flickr to share pictures related to contents in your site. Use the same title, description and tag techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.

Provide a Send to Friend feature for all products and services you offer. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail.

For starter, Yahoo provides a service called Action Buttons (search for Yahoo Action Buttons) that add links to your website for users to share, save, and blog about your website. The Yahoo action buttons use delicious for social bookmarking, and Yahoo blog site for blogging. It also has a print feature.

The social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and bring in profound changes to web surfers' experiences. It is the right time for implementing features that will make your site social media friendly. Also, using marketing techniques that utilize popular social media sites, you will be able to bring traffic to your site.

Your Social Media Marketing

Have you figured out where your potential customers are and how to reach them? If your company is doing the same thing it did thirty years ago, your company may not be in business next year. No longer is a 30-second TV commercial enough to boost sales—the marketing pie is a whole lot bigger, with many new options and a kindler and gentler approach. Before customers spend their dwindling dollars, they want you to show them that your product or service is the best solution to their problem. An increasingly effective way to reach your customers and build their trust is through online social media marketing. Has your marketing department evolved to keep up?

Traditional mass media advertising continues to erode its effectiveness as technologies allow users more control. For example, DVRs can allow viewers to skip commercials, network TV internet sites allow viewing of popular shows with limited (and different) commercials, and hundreds of satellite and digital TV and radio stations compete for your audience's attention. Instead of the captive audience you had during prime time a generation ago, your marketing efforts need to be much more focused. People are spending more and more of their free time online, so that needs to be an important component of your company's marketing plan. A simple website is no longer enough. Your future customers are deeply entrenched in internet communities, sharing a little about themselves, their pictures, and their opinions. Your company should be right alongside of them, forming relationships and building trust. You can bet if you're not effectively taking advantage of online marketing, your competitors are.

Social media marketing is very cost-effective and yields significant results when it's implemented by top marketing talent. What was popular two years ago, though, may be on its way out and something bigger and better is taking its place. To compete, your marketing staff needs to stay on top of the latest, greatest, and most effective methods. Today, reaching customers through popular social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo and others allows you to reach a wide audience of informed and tech-savvy consumers. These folks are interested in finding out what new projects your company is working on, what your corporate culture is, what special offers you have, and if your current customers love you or hate you. This allows you to build relationships with your customers in a kindler, gentler way. Perhaps most importantly, using social media marketing will boost your search engine rankings so your customers can find you easily through popular search engines and back links.

No matter where your customers find you online, you need to make sure the message you're sending is consistent and carrying an appropriate brand and value message. This message needs to be reflected through your online activities, like your social media marketing sites, your corporate website, your blog, and even in your offline marketing efforts like advertisements, sponsorships, and media coverage. Your marketing plan needs to have a consistent look and feel that is adaptable, progressive, and informative—not to mention entertaining. To accomplish this, today's top marketing departments need to have the right combination of talent and ideas. Your staff must research the options, implement strategies, and maintain momentum in an ever-changing online world. No one had heard of Twitter a few years ago, and now it's a rapidly growing venue to share snippets of information and opinions. Who knows what the next new social media platform will be?

Companies using social media marketing effectively have the best available marketing talent on their team and the investment is paying off. If your company can't make the same claim, it may be time to bring in some new players. Though social media marketing is only one facet of an effective marketing strategy, it's an important one. Companies with progressive, determined, and talented marketing professionals will be the ones who continue to reach their customers where they are, and be in business for years to come.

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About Author

Both James Yee & Bob Van Rossum 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.

James Yee has sinced written about articles on various topics from Management, Self Improvement and Motivation and Travel and Leisure. James Yee is the webmaster of .His internet resources are available at. James Yee's top article generates over 33100 views. to your Favourites.

Bob Van Rossum has sinced written about articles on various topics from Kitchen Renovation Ideas, Candida Infection and Social Media Marketing. Bob Van Rossum, President of MarketPro, (), runs the United States’ leading marketing recruiter for experienced marketing, advertising,. Bob Van Rossum's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.

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