Thursday, October 25, 2012

Social Media Marketing: Tips for Using This Hot Strategy

By Elinor McGibbon


While social media websites might just look entertaining or maybe a convenient way to stay connected with your social contacts, know that these same websites have tremendous marketing potential. However, social media sites can easily become time wasters if they are not used effectively. The paragraphs that follow contain tips, tricks, and techniques you can apply for optimal usage of social media.

Do not rush into just any strategy that looks good, but instead carefully consider the level of marketing that will genuinely benefit your business. If you rush into any campaign without doing your research, you may find yourself spending time and money to get no returns. Therefore, how you will use social media marketing to grow your business.

Twitter is a social networking site, so make sure that you are social and communicate with your followers regularly. When people tag you in their tweets, you should thank them and thus introduce yourself further out in the web. This creates a growing and interactive relationship rather than a simple "company to consumer" transaction. This will help you establish an individual identity so you will not be seen as some type of corporate entity.

One way to get more Facebook likes is to add a "Like" button to your blog, so that visitors can like your Facebook profile directly from the blog. By including a "like" button on your blog, your readers will be able to easily promote your business to their friends and family. Make your reader's life simple -- if you do, he will return again.

Be sure you keep your relationships on good terms when you interact with potential customers on social media forums and sites. Every forum member is a potential customer, so try to treat others, as you would like to be treated yourself. Keep your comments informative and useful, rather than constantly trying to sell them something. Build and maintain friendly relationships by posting frequent and helpful posts.

Whether you are creating content to post on a blog, a tweet, Facebook, or coming up with interesting titles, it is important you come up with something catchy that people will remember you by. When titles and headlines hook readers, you are going to notice people go where you ask them.

There is data suggesting that people tend to read marketing messages on social media sites during business hours on weekdays. You can use existing tools to post your social media content during these times automatically, although you are free to write them whenever your creative juices happen to be flowing.

If you are the owner of a RSS feed, you should always link all of your sites to it. This will allow your readers to find you on social networks. Expose your target audience to these links as much as possible and people should visit your profile and subscribe to your updates.

Use keywords for the text in links leading to your website. Potential customers must be sent to your specific social sites, blogs, or company pages. Also, make sure those pages are frequently maintained with current articles, products, and offers. You should be sure that all of your ads link to keyword-related content to enhance the success of your social media marketing projects.

Put a share button near the header of your blog entries that allows users to put the information on Facebook. That way your visitors can share your blog with their Facebook friends. This will increase the number of readers who visit your blog, which means more visitors who will be interested in what you have to offer.

If you are creating a blog to get the social media ball rolling, make sure you throw in some eye candy for your followers. Pictures and videos help to break up chunks of text. Introduce interesting elements like graphics, video content, or even music. However, you do not want to overdo it and make it too stimulating.

It is always best to remain humble through your social media messages. Your followers will not appreciate reading what you have to brag about, even if you are successful. Never express the opinion that you are more important or powerful than your customers and followers. At the end of the day, your customers are really the deciding factor as to the ultimate success of your business.

Remaining active is very important in social media marketing. In order to achieve success, you must be social! If you are not active and engaging, you will not have an audience. Alternatively, social media campaigns consisting of fresh, current content can offer tremendous levels of success.

Find experts in your niche, interview them, and post those videos on YouTube in order to impress your customers with your social media marketing efforts. Not only is this going to be interesting to those on your site, but if you show that you have association with those that are respected in your field, you will grow in reputation by default. Through this recognition, your sales of products and services should increase dramatically.

The benefits of social media sites can be tremendous. These sites see new users register every moment of the day, and this is a growing audience you can market your message to now and into the future. You should have a better idea of how social networks can benefit your business. You should head on over to your favorite site and get to work!




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