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Social Media Marketing for your Business

Written by: Carrie Langstroth

Article Overview: Social media marketing is the latest marketing tool that you can effectively use to reach out to your customers. While discounts, free downloads, and latest industry news are the favorites, celebrity meetings and associations are not that popular. You basically need to find out what works best for your business and go for it.

Social Media Marketing for your Business

Social media marketing is a term that has been coined recently. It is the process of using social networks like FaceBook, orkut, twitter, online communities, forums and blogs to market a business. With Web 2.0 technology, it has become extremely easy for marketers to manage these online communities since a large part of the content that is created is done by the users themselves.

Social media marketing functions on a few basic concepts. It is a process where marketers try and create positive word of mouth in the online space so that awareness of their business and online activities grows. The buzz around is created based on events, tweets, videos, contests and blogs that a social media marketer creates for the benefit of its stakeholders.

Promotion of a business that uses social media marketing can occur in various ways that the promoters may themselves not know about. This is the power of viral marketing since it spreads like a network through various people that your business customers or fans may be linked with. Because social media marketing cannot be completely controlled by the manufacturers, marketers or promoters, there has been some amount of hesitation that people may feel before initiating their business into the process.

Recent social media marketing trends indicate what the users of specific business networks are looking for. A study conducted by Lightspeed Research and provided to eMarketer indicates that most customers usually like to see discounts for themselves as fans or associates of the marketing group. Other actions by the social media marketers that were also considered to be relevant were 'providing relevant news and analyses, 'providing new ideas and thinking', 'creating useful applications' and ' offering free downloads'.

On the other hand, marketing activities like celebrity associations or meetings, a chance to sponsor a favorite sports team or website and a free hand to create competitions or surveys was not so hot on the list of actions that were found relevant.

If you are looking to initiate your venture into social media marketing, it is important that you understand that there are some things that you need to keep in mind. Marketers, who get too overwhelmed by their own brand, talk about their company or brand all the time. Sometimes they don't realize that their customers are not as mesmerized with the brand as they are.

It is important to identify what current and potential customers desire from your brand or company and provide solutions that are client or customer centric. While you will need to initiate some talk around the brand, it is essential to do it in a manner that will be appreciated by your customers.

For example, taking away from the above mentioned findings, it might be a great start to give a limited period discount offer to get some users into the fold. Updating events and talking about something new every week is essential because you do not want your regular customers and reader to vanish from the scene. Surfing a specific link on the Internet is like a habit, which once broken may take time to get back to.

Make sure that you monitor the talk on your website or blog carefully so that you are always aware of what is happening. It can be a great source of feedback for you and your team.

Related Articles
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  Social Media Gains Momentum for B2B Marketers
  Where Are You in Social Media Adoption Curve?
  12 Tips for the Social Media Newbie
  Resourcing B2B social media

Article Tags: marketing tool, media marketing
Referred by: http://jaykubassek.com



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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