Social Media Marketing You must Take Advantage of !

What is Social Media?

Social media are media for social communication by using web-based and mobile technologies. Using social media, people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online.

What Are Some Social Media Websites?

Because social media is such a broad term, it covers a large range of websites, which offer a wide variety of social media from social sharing websites such as YouTube and Flickr through social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

Here are some examples of social media websites, which invite the visitors to interact:

• Social Bookmarking
by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked, such as Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Simpy

• Social News
by voting for articles and commenting on them , such as Digg, Propeller, Reddit

• Social Networking
by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

• Social Photo and Video Sharing
by sharing photos or videos and commenting on them, such as Flickr, YouTube

• Wikis
by adding articles and editing existing articles, such as Wikipedia, Wikia

Basically, any website that invites visitors to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of social media website. Because of social media, it’s easy to share ideas, photos, videos, likes and dislikes on the internet worldwide. You can find friends, business contacts and become part of a community. Because social media gives a chance to be engaged and engage others online, more and more people gather online and become a huge potential market from businesses’ point of view. Therefore, social media is of particular interest to businesses. Currently, businesses of all sizes are experimenting with social media marketing on how to get in and what appears to be an especially viral way to promote their products and/or service there.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing consists of the attempt to use social media to promote products and/or services.

To use social media marketing effectively, businesses have to be perceived as members of the social media community, willing to interact with other members and providing values to them. Like using any other media, using social media to engage and build relationship with potential customers take time. Social media marketing campaigns are not one-shot affairs; they need to be nurtured over time. Social media marketing is a type of marketing that many businesses could benefit from because of low cost and huge exposure to publics.

Use Social Media Marketing Effectively

Social media offers a great opportunity for marketing, but the role of social media marketing depends on your business and how it best fits the needs of your business. The outcome of social media marketing also depends on the effort you are willing to put forward. The following are three major social media platforms, which small business can benefit from.

Social Media Marketing Via Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging platform that allows you to send short text messages 140 characters in length, called “tweets”, to your followers.

For business, Twitter can be used as a marketing tool, to broadcast your business’s latest news, interact with your potential customers or customers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and group communication. Please refer to “How to Twitter – Tools and Tips“.

Social Media Marketing Via Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and has more than 600 million active users As of January 2011. Facebook users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Facebook users must register before using the site. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or other characteristics. Businesses definitely want to promote your products and/or services by taking advantage of the facebooks’ huge marketing potential. Many businesses are marketing their business on Facebook using both Facebook Pages and Facebook Group options.

Social Media Marketing via YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. There is a wide variety of different videos out there, such as learning videos, entertainment, comedy, action, music, marketing and much more.

When it comes to marketing, video can be a great way to interact with potential customers. Youtube is the largest video sharing site to date, with the most traffic and the highest amount of users on it, which making Youtube the definitive place for getting your videos published and marketed on. YouTube is a great tool for marketing your products and/or services with low cost while reaching huge audience. If you are looking for inexpensive ways of advertising, Youtube offers you the great opportunity.

Businesses are looking for ways to be creative and innovative in marketing. Social media marketing can help you increase website traffic and visitors’ engagement, promote your brand and reach broader customers. Social media is an effective and low cost way for marketing online. Learning how to market your business using Social Media effectively is crucial to your online success.

Fabian Nilson May 31, 2011 at 7:55 am | Permalink | Reply

Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is great blog. A great read. I will certainly be back.