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Using Social Media Marketing

Guest post by: Terri Levine

Article Overview: Still on the fence about social media marketing? You can argue the pro's and con's until the cows come home but it won't change the fact that as a marketing tool, it continues to grow in popularity.

Using Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing involves using social networks and online communities, including blogs and other online resources such as Youtube, to present yourself and your products and services to the wider community. Some of the most popular social media sites today are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Flickr, and there are many others. A comprehensive list is available to you to sign up to when you sign up for a free ping.fm account. (Ping.fm enables you to post something to your entire social media network with just one click - a great time saver.)

Social media marketing (we'll call it SMM to save space), is not a quick fix, overnight marketing technique. You start with a message or video that you hope will be popular and go "viral" online, being forwarded and re-tweeted and 'shared' with other people. Then people become fans and continue to promote you to their own community of friends and online social media contacts. This equates to free marketing for you.

You will find that most of the online social media and networking sites (for example, Facebook), enable you to create special pages, fan pages, groups, discussions, polls and surveys that enable people to join you and follow you so they will receive everything you post, and what they like they will forward on to their own friends and network.

You have to realize that you have no control over how others share your social media messages and content, but unless your product or service is shonky, illegal or dishonest, you shouldn't experience problems.

To be successful, you can't just post and run away to do other things. It is called "social" media for a reason. You do have to engage with your readers, fans and online community, participating in conversations and adding appropriate comments and posts to their pages as well.

It's a two way deal. This means you have to make time to keep checking your online sites because not only do you have to interact socially with others, and not just bombard them with marketing messages, you need to respond to other people's comments and questions addressed to you.

Approached in the right manner and taking the time to do it properly, SMM can be a very effective marketing tool to build your brand and get your marketing message to the world.

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Article Tags: marketing, social media



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks


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