social marketing
Social marketing can be quite confusing. Basically it's a
bit of an umbrella term which includes interactive broadcasts
such as blogs and podcasts, as well as social networking websites
- all marketing tools for your business. These usually allow
visitors to become users or members, create profiles, and
upload and share content.
Popular social networks include Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin,
Pinterest, Bebo, Delicious, Digg, MySpace, and Yahoo! Buzz.
You may feel that they aren't relevant to your business, but
you can use them to your advantage.
There are hundreds around but we've taken a look at Facebook
and Twitter in a bit more detail and covered a couple of other
social media related items of interest. Blogging
is covered in a separate article.
Facebook
You may already have a personal Facebook profile for interacting
with your friends and family. However, you can also have one
for your business. This can be a great traffic generator to
your website. If you would like to do this just go to Facebook
and click on the link (at the right on the home page) to create
a business page (or we can set it up for you).
Then you upload your logo, images of your products and anything
else to give your business a friendly face. You do need to
update your profile regularly with news, or special offers
etc and send out a weekly message to keep yourself top of
mind. Links back to your site from the Facebook profile will
increase your inbound links and help improve your search engine
ranking. Of course, include a link to your Facebook profile
in your website and newsletters
as well.
Forums
A forum is really on online chat room where people have conversations
with other people. The topic discussed really depends on the
website that the forum is on - it could be anything from accommodation,
to children's toys, to interior design. The most successful
forums are usually on objective or third part sites which
have more credibility than on your own website. So, have a
search for some forums that relate to your industry or business.
Find a discussion you can participate in, "post"
your comment (which needs to be genuinely valuable, accurate
and relevant) and put a link to your website at the bottom.
Pinterest
Once viewed as a niche player in the social space, Pinterest
has become one of the fastest growing social networks ever
and a considerable force in marketing.
Stats released February this year, show Pinterest is close
to outstripping Twitter in user numbers and that 47% of U.S.
online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations
from Pinterest – that’s huge!. And it sends more
traffic to other sites than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube
combined.
Twitter
Twitter is an online community where people share their thoughts
or opinions in less than 140 characters. For businesses, it's
another way to get yourself in front of a potential customers.
Go to Twitter and sign
up for an account then find interesting people to follow -
generally they will follow you too. Then start tweeting -
always include a link to your website, make your tweets valuable
and aim to add a new tweet every day or so.
Social Bookmarking
Enabling visitors to your site to 'share' articles and web
pages with or link them to their social networks or blogs
which will increase the number of incoming
links to your site and help boost your search
engine rankings.
There are lots of free 'bookmark buttons' available which
can assist you to do this. One in particluar is the
'AddThis' bookmark code to relevant pages or articles
on your website. Visit 'AddThis'
tor have a look in your favourite search engine for a list
of similar tools and widgets by searching with the keywords
"add this" or "share this".
If you can incorporate these techniques into your website
marketing strategy, you will keep your site fresh and interesting,
and have a much better chance of improving your exposure and
maintaining a flow of interested visitors to your site.
If you'd like to discuss whether social media is suitable
for you give us
a call. If you'd rather send us an email for more information
you could complete our enquiry
form.