Getting Started with Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Digital Marketing

Getting Started with Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is a powerful, inexpensive, and effective way to gain exposure for your small to medium-sized business. However, getting started in the realm of social media can be a bit daunting. There are thousands of social media tools and websites available, and it can be difficult to choose which ones will work best for your business. In general, there are some social media basics that every business should have.

blog

An essential part of any social media marketing campaign is a blog. Blogs are often overlooked by businesses both large and small. They incorrectly assume that blogs are too informal a medium to get their message across. The truth is, blogging is what you make of it. You can be as formal, relevant, appropriate and informative as you want to make it. Some very successful international companies have helped make a name for themselves on blogging. IBM, for example, has a huge network of employee blogs. IBM blogs about almost every aspect of their business, sending the message that they are experts in their field.

Blogs offer a great way to add relevant content to a website and a good opportunity to use keywords appropriately and frequently, an essential element in getting your website ranked high by Google. Blogging is a useful tool for gaining or maintaining respect in your industry, increasing web traffic, and attracting new customers by showing that you know what you’re talking about. Preferably, a blog should be hosted within a subfolder of the same domain as the rest of the website, eg ‘yourwebsite.com/blog’. If that’s not possible, there are free blogging platforms available where a user can create and host their own blog on the go, these include Blogger and WordPress.

microblogging

Microblogging is a bit like the name suggests, it is made up of small bits of information posted in reverse chronological order on a microblogging site. Twitter is a popular microblogging website that allows its users to send and read ‘follower’ updates. These updates are called ‘tweets’, which are posts of up to 140 characters. Tweets are displayed on the user’s profile page and sent to the home pages of other users who have chosen to “follow” them. Users can send and receive tweets through the Twitter website, through various third-party applications, and through mobile phones.

Twitter is useful for businesses by allowing them a platform to discuss industry news and trends, promote their brand and services, and gain exposure online. A successful Twitter account can easily garner several thousand followers, which in turn drives traffic to the user’s website and increases sales.

social networking sites

Social networking websites allow you to create personal profiles where you can enter personal information, photos, and videos. Users make ‘friends’ or ‘connections’ with other users, creating a virtual network of friends online.

Facebook is a very popular and free social networking website with about 250 million users. Users can join networks (by city, workplace, school, and region) and connect and interact with other people. Users add friends, send public and private messages, and update their personal profiles to connect with their friends.

Businesses promote themselves on Facebook by creating Facebook Pages, a fan page where users can follow and show interest in and support for a business. Good Facebook Pages that attract followers and customers are those that incorporate great images, lots of relevant content, and even some videos. This is a great place to add links to your blog, photos of your product, videos (if possible), discount coupons, and links to any other social media accounts you may have on other websites.

Social Bookmarking Websites

Del.icio.us, StubleUpon, Mixx, Digg, Reddit, and other similar sites are called social bookmarking websites. Social bookmarking sites allow you to submit web pages, articles, blogs, and other content online. Other users will vote for them and rank them. The number of votes determines which entries are featured higher in the content list. The highest ranked items get the most exposure and the highest number of page views. These types of sites often generate a lot of traffic for the owner’s web pages. Companies successfully use these sites for promotional purposes by entering their own web content and promoting it. Great content will get great reviews and hopefully become an online phenomenon.

Share photos and videos

Video sharing allows you to upload and share videos on websites like YouTube. Other users can view the videos, share, rate and comment on them. Similarly, photo sharing tools allow you to upload and post photos online to share with other users. Photos or videos made in creative, unique, or entertaining ways often return a large amount of website traffic and clientele to the source business. For example, Blendtec, a manufacturer of blenders, created ‘Will it Blend?’ YouTube campaign. The campaign is fun and engaging and has subsequently garnered a lot of attention. Blendtec sales have increased by 700% since the start of the campaign.

There is a wide range of social media tools that businesses can use for online marketing. Although not all the available sources of social media marketing are mentioned here, this is a great start. Web 2.0-savvy businesses are using these must-have tools as part of their marketing plans as they begin to recognize that social media is an effective and cost-effective way to reach customers and increase sales.

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