While Social Media may be the ‘new kid on the block’, it is quickly becoming an important component in any organic search campaign. SMM can aid with the overall search effort, it can also be used as an independent strategy.
Social media marketing ultimately means many things to many people. For our purposes, we’ll define Social Media Marketing as using:
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- social bookmarking (eg. Delicious, Google Bookmarks)
- social news (eg. Digg, Reddit)
- social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
- social tagging (eg. StumbleUpon)
- ratings and review sites (eg. TripAdvisor, Yelp)
- social answers and collaboration type sites (Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia)
The benefits of using social media marketing are many, including:
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a) it creates awareness of great content – some forms of social media may generate10,000, 20,000 even 30,000 unique visits in a day.
b) it increases traffic, RSS subscriptions and more to a site – while traffic is a benefit, sites need visitors to take some sort of action, are RSS subscriber counts are often a sound metric.
c) it builds the authority of the content publisher – done properly, others in the space will begin to view the article publisher as an authority on the topic of the social media submission, which leads to further opportunities and sales.
d) it helps develop a network of similar interest individuals – many of those supporting social media submissions will have some interest in the topic, and therefore make good allies for future submissions.
e) it ultimately builds links, which leads to improved search engine positioning. As this form of link creation is completely a function of quality of content, it is a very search engine friendly ways of building links.
For those unfamiliar with the term ‘Digg Effect’, its the impact that having a Digg submission go ‘hot’ can have on a site. In many cases, the result is that the masses of visitors crash the site, unless special (though inexpensive) precautions are taken in advance.
Social Media Marketing requires specific understanding, expertise, and power profiles. Done improperly, social media can lead to a reputation management fiasco, or may see incredible content go virtually unnoticed. Power profiles are a must, as is experience!
While there are many benefits to social media, it is not necessarily for everyone. Social media is in fact but one tool in the internet marketers’ toolkit. Its use should be carefully considered in the scope of a larger campaign, and each media’s individual strengths and weaknesses. Keep in mind, social media traffic itself typically converts extremely poorly, so must often be used to accomplish supporting goals, and goals must be set forth in advance.
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The SEP team have power users accounts in virtually every major social media, and significant experience.
Call or email us today to ask how Social Media Marketing can be added to your marketing mix