Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
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How To Promote Yourself on Social Sites Without Actually “Promoting Yourself”
I was recently asked the question, “How do you market your company on social news / bookmarking sites without appearing like a spammer?” This is a great question — one that has a pretty straightforward answer but which also requires a lot of work. Why? Because it is easy to sign up for a social bookmarking site and simply submit your own “stuff.” Submitting your own stuff does however not guarantee that your efforts will be successful. There is actually a lot more to it.
If I could sum up in two words how to promote yourself on sites such as Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Twitter and the others without actually promoting yourself, I would say, “Get involved!” And how does one actually get involved in a social news / bookmarking site? By being an active member of the community.
It is really no different than web forums which are still around but are quickly being replaced with social media. Typical profile of a web forum spammer – they join an active forum and do nothing else but toot their own horn. This typically consists on dropping links to their own site(s), promoting their own products or services or even in feeble attempt to help or provide advice, invite other forum members to their own sites for “more information” rather than keeping the conversation going on the forum itself.
I see the same scenario happen over and over again with social news and bookmarking sites. Here are a few indicators that someone is there merely for self promotion and/or gain:
- ONLY submits sites they own or have an interest in
- DOES NOT vote on anything from other sites
- Attempts to FRIEND EVERYBODY even though they may not know them or have any common interests
- Doesn’t know how to FOLLOW THE RULES of the community
- Creates MULTIPLE PROFILES so they can vote their stuff up
While there may be rare occurrences where this type of behavior has some measure of success, most often it fails. That is due to the fact that success with social sites is largely dependent on the community itself.
So how does one promote themselves on these site properly? The essential ingredient is to become involved in the community. Instead of just submitting your own content all the time, submit and vote on other people’s content. Also get involved in the conversation (commenting on submissions), friend those you know or who have similar interests as you and even help combat spam (where applicable).
When these things become your regular practice, it then becomes easy and even perfectly acceptable to “slip” your own content in from time to time. Your content will also have more merit because you yourself are viewed as a respectable member of the community.
I would also advise one to pick and choose which social news / bookmarking sites you want to spend your time on. Sure there are tools a plenty that will allow you to submit content to multiple social sites, all with the click of a button. However, rather than quantity you should concern yourself over quality. In other words focus your efforts on the social sites you are going to be involved in and sites that going to be related to the content you are submitting (i.e. don’t submit an article on power tools to social site geared towards women).
Bottom line to to actually use social sites for what they were intended for. Add value to the community and the community will pay you back.
About the Author:
David Wallace is CEO and founder of SearchRank, an original search engine optimization and marketing firm providing keyword analysis, organic search engine optimization, link popularity enhancement, pay per click management, search engine friendly web design and ongoing campaign maintenance.
Social Media
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Social Media Is Not Just For Kids Anymore 10 Quick Start Tips
By Michiel Van Kets
It was not so long ago that social media was thought by many to be a short-lived trend and not an internet marketing tool that could be facilitated by the business world. However, as the number of users of popular social networking sites increases every day, can your business really afford to continue ignoring this phenomenon?
Having a website for your business simply isn’t enough if it doesn’t have a high visibility. Your objective should be to get your website noticed, and the way to do that these days is by writing about it, and getting it written about in blogs and other social media sites.
Some of the social media tools that you can use to help achieve your objectives include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and related forums and blogs.
Twitter is the newest social media tool to appear with a reputation that has grown extensively in a very short period of time and now ranked as the third most used social network. Twitter’s attraction is that it offers a very simple way for people to connect with each other, even President Obama is known to use it. Twitter is an effective business marketing tool to point to your website and/or blog updates.
Facebook is one of the largest social networking site around, with more than 200 million active users worldwide. It offers fantastic business features and the opportunity of making business contacts. Facebook now has “Pages” you can promote your business on and get “fans”. Another attractive feature of Facebook is the advertising opportunities which reach your specific demographic. There is also an “Events” feature to help with your internet marketing.
Integrating blogging into your marketing plans is an effective way to connect with your target audience. Blogs are useful places to post questions and get feedback about products and businesses. A business blog is an effective internet marketing tool because it contains specific industry related content. Search engines will pick up on the keywords and phrases used and attract a high number of visitors.
Here are some tips to get you started in your social networking and internet marketing.
1. Set up a business blog. For an online business, they are perfect as you can build awareness, establish expertise and create a practical communication channel between you and your customers which is ideal for building trust and reputation. Business blogs are generally successful because they allow you to connect directly with your customers and give them an avenue to communicate directly with you.
2. Track and identify those blogs where your consumers hang out and integrate yourself into this community. Post interesting content, make contacts and form relationships. Time spent creating awareness around your brand in this environment is time well spent because you are so significant within that position.
3. Append your signature to all blog comments and outgoing email messages as it offers a personal and effective, and free, way to market your business. Insert your keywords, into your URL in your signature line. Make the actual link your URL. The keyword link to your site may help your search engine rankings.
4. Use video to show your product or service, particularly popular are ‘How to..’ videos. Put it on your blog and website and send it to YouTube. You can also post it at YouTube and simply embed it into your sites.
5. Open an account in a couple of social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Create content that is highly relevant and link worthy. DO NOT SPAM the groups, you’ll lose followers and fans very quickly if you do. Some groups such as Facebook will close your account.
6. Learn Twitter etiquette. The main rules are, don’t spam, spammers don’t last long on Twitter. Always give credit for retweets, don’t do spammy auto direct messages.
7. Add links from your Twitter and Facebook pages to your blog, website and email.
8. Have a plan as to how you will research and investigate social media networks and follow it. Don’t rush things, learn the ropes first.
9. Don’t directly promote your business all the time. Instead, offer ways to help others such as providing resource links, articles and helpful tips.
10. Link to other blogs and websites. Links are what search engines and users make good use of, and search engines need them.
Consumers don’t only want to communicate with each other; they also want access to the businesses and companies they buy their goods and services from. Your customers want to connect with the real people behind the company and know what you are doing and planning to do.
Business owners are becoming more aware how important using social media as one of their internet marketing methods really is. Consumers are more internet savvy, have more access to information and can search and compare easily. They expect (or at least want) a company to provide them the information they need and want with the ability to interact with the company. Social media marketing is a way to connect to consumers on a more personal level. Now is the time to put your energy into looking at and learning about these social networking sites as they are set to radically change the way businesses communicate.
Michiel Van Kets provides article services for Idea Design, a Tampa Bay web design firm committed to working with clients to develop their online Web presence. For information and advice on web design, blogs and twitter and internet marketing, please visit the website.
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