Social Media - Its Role in Online Marketing

Social media optimization is emerging as an important tool for internet marketing and its success for online media can be ascertained from the fact that famous social media sites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, LinkedIn have users in million. This whopping number of users online obviously is a great lure for an Advertising or Brand manager either of a smaller company or an International Brand. For Example YouTube has more than 101 million users with 50 percent visitor rate on daily basis.

Now as for a beginner Social Media happens to be websites with strong databases and customization letting people to talk, participate, share, network and bookmark, online. These social media sites are provided with facilities like discussion, feedback, voting, comments and sharing of information among users within and outside the network. Being a two side conversation media, Social Media Optimization is fine tuned to be connected with other sites, resources and people.

As this wide spectrum of social media is not easy to be summed in a single facility, hence it is provided to the users in multiple ways and manner. On the basis of facility first comes the Social News Sites like Digg, Sphinn, Newsvine, Mixx, and more where a user can post or make comment on a news article.

Photo Bucket, Flickr, Snapfish, YouTube are the Social Sharing Sites where photos and articles are get shared among its users. Social Networks like Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, LikedIn are the place online where two persons connect with each other online. Finally, Social Book Marking is the other social media platform in form of sites like Delicious, Faves, Stumble Upon and Blog Marks, etc.

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Does Your Online Marketing Strategy Include Social Media?

Social Networking has been around forever and has been used for many years without even thinking about the possibilities that it can offer. Networks of people make things happen, from finding jobs, making friends, to finding the perfect place to live and even meeting your future soul mate.

Recently, the fundamentals of networking have transitioned to an Online Social Media Marketing presence on the Internet. Online Networking is a concept that connects people together on a global social media community sharing valuable benefits and information with each other. Within your social networking community you are building relationships and trust. You are simply inviting others to step into your social media world and become your friend.

Social Media Marketing creates web site promotion by driving target traffic to your social media channels after you have connected with comments, conversations, sharing content, videos, articles and blogs, etc. You will ATTRACT followers if you add valuable information and solutions for others without "pitching" your deal or promoting your business. Gathering your friends and their friends creates your community network for free.

Google recently purchased You Tube and loves Web.2.0 Marketing! Think about this...Google is the most powerful catalysts for Social Media Marketing. You can get Google ranking with HOT keywords in the titles of your online marketing for free.

Go ahead and create your social media channels: You Tube, Facebook, My Space and Twitter to name a few. These are all free accounts where you can network with strangers that become your friends, share your stories and ideas within your community of trust and integrity. Building a social media profile is essential for your viewers to connect with who you are. Real people have real stories! The initial investment of time will be well spent when you have established a valuable web presence.

Also, visibility and participation are relevant to ATTRACT your social networking community. Choose only 2 or 3 Web 2.0 sites in the beginning because it is important to be active on your social media channels to build strong relationships with others. Regular attention is essential if you want to inspire and influence within your social media community.

In a nutshell, understanding these basic concepts are CRUCIAL factors that you must remember if you want to establish integrity and drive massive amounts of traffic to your website. Think of your Social Network as your Post Office Box, mail goes out and mail comes in. Isn't it annoying when you receive tons of junk mail?

We have just defined a beginners guide to Social Media Marketing.

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What Is Social Media in 7 Minutes?

Social Media in 7 Minutes (SMI7M) is a revolutionary online training program designed to not only educate small business owners on how to apply social media into their marketing plan, but also to provide a practical tool which will allow them to implement their marketing plan in just 7 minutes a day.

SMI7M was developed by Black Box Social Media, LLC (BBSM), and Mike Dillard. BBSM is a social media marketing for business consulting group who works with higher end clients, such as former Reality TV Stars, Professional Sports Teams, International Motivation Speakers, Gurus, Infomercial products, etc... Mike Dillard is perhaps one of the most well-respected internet marketing experts in the field today and owner of such multi million dollar companies as the Elevation Group and Better NetWorker. The goal of creating SMI7M was to provide small businesses with the opportunity to understand, create, and implement a social media marketing plan that works in today's tough economic climate.

What Makes Social Media in 7 Minutes Unique?

There are two specific traits to SMI7M that separate it from any other training program:

First, SMI7M is an online video training series. The benefit is that the trainings will be continuously adapted to fit the ever changing dynamic of social media. BBSM Co-Founder Curt Maly says the following:

"If you write a book on social media, it will be outdated by the time it is printed due to the evolving nature of the technology. With SMI7M, we update our videos to match the rapidly chaotic changes of the industry. We update our users; we host webinars to explain new technologies (such as Google+), and we reshoot our videos to provide easy to follow step by step directions on how to implement and perform. There is no other living, breathing training system for small businesses like this available anywhere else!"

Currently, SMI7M offers over 30 video step by step 'how-to' trainings with workbooks revolving around the business utilization of social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Foursquare. The first part of the video series, it's 'foundation' part, details how to set up and design each social site; which is perfect for beginners. The remaining trainings gradually increase in it's degree of difficulty as the creators slowly reveal their ninja tricks that will allow you to unlock the unlimited potential of this great marketing tool. The trainings also have manuals on how to set up online directories, such as Google Places, Yelp, BingLocal, YahooLocal, etc... to further boost your SEO and social interaction.

As new technologies emerge, such as Google+, SMI7M will create new how-to videos to show users exactly how to set up and utilize these latest technologies.

The second unique benefit of SMI7M is it's own software tool called the '7 Minute Dashboard'. The 7 Minute Dashboard is the crux of the SMI7M product. Once you've been trained on and set up your social media accounts, this tool will allow you to manage all of your accounts from one location quickly, efficiently, simply, and in just 7 minutes a day. The 7 Minute Dashboard will allow users to perform the following functions from one location:

• Update all Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn feeds
• Schedule out future posts
• Respond to all emails, responses, and engagements
• Update and syndicate all blogs
• Create and Send Text Messages
• Create and Send Email blasts
• Provide detailed marketing reports
• and much more!

BBSM Co-Founder Nick Bridges details the importance of the 7 Minute Dashboard:

"The problem with most trainings is while they provide great information, the user generally doesn't know how to implement the training; how to put it into action. Our 7 Minute Dashboard is designed to allow small business owners the ability to turn their education into action by managing all of their social media sites in just 7 minutes a day. I don't care how busy you are, you can always find an extra 7 minutes a day to help promote your product and service and make more profits!"

Just as websites are ingrained in Business Marketing 101 as a 'must-have' for all businesses, social media now is a requirement for every website. Here are some telling statistics about the impact that social proof has on influencing consumer buying decisions:

• 14% of people trust ads while 76% of people trust consumer recommendations
• 81% of said they'd received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchased through a social site, and 75% of those who received such advise found it to be influential in their buying decision
• 80% of US Internet using moms were influenced by word of mouth from friends and family when making a purchasing decision

This great social technology allows businesses to interact with their customers and potential clients and provide social proof in a more personal manner than ever before. A successful social media marketing campaign will have a extremely high ROI with minimal time or monetary investment...if you know what you are doing. Hiring employees is time consuming, risky, and costly. Outsourcing these functions to other marketing consulting companies is very expensive. SMI7M, with its 7 Minute Dashboard is the cost effective, time saving solution to the challenge of 'how to create and implement a social media marketing plan' for small businesses today.

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Social Media Tips for Beginners

Using social media to market a business is not easy most especially if you haven't used it for any reason. It would take some time for you to know the ins and outs and you have to take things seriously. You have to read books and if needed, ask for help.

To make things a bit easier for you, here are some beginner tips that you can ponder on.

• Take things little by little. You might have heard people who became successful in the use of social media to market their businesses. Well, these people had worked so hard and that they had spent a considerable amount of money before they reached the top. If you would like to be like them, you have to start from the bottom and that is by creating your profiles on different social media accounts. Take a look at the different sites and then select those that you are comfortable with or those that have been proven to help.

• Test widgets and buttons. Different sites have their own widgets and buttons and you have to use these in order for you to gain more. However, while using them, you also have to observe which ones help the most and which ones don't work at all. Keep the buttons and widgets that help you a lot and then drop those that don't help you at all.

• Avoid annoying your audience. Many marketers believed that it is just right for them to post coupons or advertisements on their social media accounts right away. However, this is not how it works. Before posing about any coupons or advertisements, you have to provide helpful information first. Who are you and what business or products are you promoting? How can these products help potential customers? Once your audiences are informed, it would then be the right time for you to post coupons, deals or ads.

• Remain humble. Do not consider yourself an expert mainly because you were able to generate a lot of money on your first 3 months. You can only call yourself an expert if you can generate a sustainable income by using social media to promote your business or products. Stay humble all the time. Ask for help and if someone asks for your help, do not hesitate to teach him/her.

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What Is Social Media Marketing? Read More About It

This is a question that gets thrown a lot these days as more and more people try their lucks online. People from all walks of life are seeing the potential of the internet as a business platform so they are joining the bandwagon. The problem is that so many of these people are clueless about marketing their businesses online. So if you're one of these people who are beginners when it comes to social marketing, please read on. We are going to teach you the basics of social media marketing and how it's done.

So what is social media marketing? Well, in the simplest of terms, it's an internet marketing strategy that leverages the influence and power of sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. to build traffic towards a website as well as build such website's online reputation. So if you're posting a link of your website on Facebook, or tweeting it on Twitter, or making a video on YouTube about your website, you are basically doing social media marketing.

It is no secret that social sites are among the most influential entities online. Take social networking giant Facebook for instance. It has over half a billion registered users worldwide. It is the only site to ever achieve this kind of numbers. And that is for Facebook alone. What if you add to this number the users of other notable social sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. These are the reasons why as a webmaster or website builder, you should never ignore and underestimate the power of social media. You should use it for as long and as often as you can. Yes, it can be very time-consuming but it's totally worth it. If you play your cards right, you can easily drive thousands of web traffic to your website using only social media. Thousands of webmasters are doing it on a daily basis. If they can, then you can as well.

One last piece of good advice: do not lose sight of the main reason why sites exist. They were created as communication platforms, places where people can have conversations and have discussions. With that said, majority of your time on these sites should be spent on talking to and communicating with other users. A conversation is a two-way process. So talk, reply, send a message, answer a message, leave a comment, etc. In short, communicate as often as you can with the other members.

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Social Media Marketing For Beginners

In the recent past years Social Media Marketing has dominated and defined Internet marketing. The popularity of social sites like MySpace and social bookmarking sites like Digg has caused this push. Social media has two main components, user generated content and the networking capability allowing you to form groups of friends and others that you can share content with.

Sites like MySpace, Zubby, and Facebook allow users to create profiles using text, videos and pictures to design their pages. These can then be shared with a selected group of other people in a special "friends" network and if the user wishes these pages can be shared over the whole social network.

Sites like Digg, Flickr, Associated Content and YouTube allow users to submit links to their favorite news articles online, pictures, articles, and videos then vote on the content that others have submitted. The most popular content is displayed on the front page of the site and the other pages are available to the general public to browse through. These drive traffic to the site and to the pages that are bookmarked.

There are many different ways to use these types of sites, either together or alone.

The use of these types of sites to promote your products and services is what is known as social media marketing. The types of traffic you get once your content is discovered and becomes well known in social media are primary traffic and secondary traffic.

Primary traffic is the direct traffic from the site that you used to make your site popular. If you are using a site that has fairly heavy traffic like Digg to promote your site you could get a large amount of traffic in a short amount of time so you need to make sure your site can handle the traffic, otherwise it may crash.

Once a site becomes popular on a social media site it gets talked about. When people talk about these sites they post links to the site which draws more traffic to the content. This indirect traffic is the secondary traffic. It is the secondary traffic that continues to flow to your site after the initial surge of direct traffic slows.

The benefits of primary and secondary traffic coming from these sites include exposure to your site initially. Once your site is known by the general public then organic traffic will begin and repeat visitors start to show up, as long as you have something to entice them to come back.

Natural links to your site are beneficial because they are given by people or companies who have nothing to gain from your business venture. These are generally from relevant sites increasing the likelihood that visitors are going to be genuinely interested in your products and services. These links improve your search engine rankings and improve organic traffic.

Social media marketing allows your site to get exposure in a larger site and to a larger group of people. If your traffic levels off you can use this form of marketing to jump start your traffic and work on taking your search engine traffic to the next level.

The alternative for increasing your search engine traffic is using pay per click advertisement. Using pay per click campaigns can help you to sustain increased traffic from the search engines but this traffic comes with a price tag.

Using social media marketing is free and can increase your traffic and your ratings in the search engines. Getting your site notices a couple times a year in the this arena can make your site popular enough to bring in traffic throughout the year.

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Social Media Marketing - How It Can Benefit Your Business

Traditionally, the content and frequency of marketing programs was the exclusive domain of external agencies such as advertising and marketing research firms. However, with the advent of social media, it has become possible to use web-based technology to encourage interactive communication. This is often referred to as consumer generated media, because it is driven by end-users. Social media marketing is therefore, the method by which businesses utilize social online media channels, to connect with their target markets.

Social media marketing also involves social media optimization or SMO. It is referred to in this way, because its emphasis is on achieving website optimization, which is the process of improving a site's visibility on the web. Social media includes social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs, video sharing such as YouTube, social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, presentation sharing, photo sharing and the ever popular Meetup website. It is also synonymous with Social Network Marketing. This involves the use of social networking sites to market products and services, as well as to engage in public relation activities.

By using a technique known as viral marketing, marketers are able to use these websites to improve product sales, and increase brand awareness. This marketing method is referred to as being viral because in essence, it is passed from person to person, via the social network sites. Text messages, images, video clips, and games, are just some of the tools used in viral marketing promotions. The success of a viral marketing program is dependent on targeting and focusing on people with large social networks, who have a significant influence on their network. This will ensure that the advertising message gains optimum visibility.

Social media marketing is increasingly being seen by business owners, as an important part of their integrated marketing program, which can assist them in growing their business. Studies indicate that business owners, who commit a minimum of 6 hours per week on social marketing programs, have been able to generate at least 50% more exposure for their business. Along with this, they have been able to attract more traffic to their website, gain qualified leads, and create new business partnerships.

To get started with social media marketing, you will of course have to join one of the top social media sites. In an April 2010 Social Media Marketing Report by Michael Stelzner, experienced marketers identified Twitter as their number one social networking platform, with blogs following closely in second place. For beginner marketers, Facebook is ranked as their number one choice closely followed by Twitter and LinkedIn.

One important way in which you can maximize the benefit of using a social networking site, is to build relationships. If you are using Twitter, for example, you can start seeking out the top tweeters in your niche and even in your local area. Having identified these people, you can then begin participating in discussions, and become involved in the promotion of important events and products. Also make sure to respond to tweets, and encourage retweeting as much as possible.

Other benefits to be derived from social marketing effectively include getting marketing feedback, as well as linking with key players in the industry. These links will of course be cross-cultural, as well as international and will therefore extend your market penetration.

Social network marketing is very consumer focused. Through the use of social media, it is possible to put the spotlight on what people need, rather than on persuading them to buy something that you have already produced. The feedback you get is able to guide your product development, and focus your marketing efforts on what is important to your bottom line.

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