Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
If you work in Public Relations, you’re more than well aware of how to write a press release since that is your bread and butter. You are probably a whiz at writing them for traditional media outlets – newspapers, magazines, tv/commercials, etc. etc. But how comfortable do you feel having to write them for web 2.0 and social media? Is there a difference? Does it matter?
Well lets start with the basics. Of course it matters! More and more customers are spending their on their computers versus traditional outlets. You must go where your target demographic is and interact with them now to gain their attention and their loyalty.
Is there a difference between writing a traditional press release to be sent out versus a social media press release? The answer is a plain and simple, unequivocal – yes. Social Media strives on keywords. With the searching capabilities of Twitter, Facebook, & Google Primarily, people are imputting specific keywords to find things they want and companies must somehow know these keywords and use them to their advantage.
How do you do it?
As with any case of good journalism or press – the headline is everything. It must be short and sweet and have the exact keywords you’re hoping to have searched.
When you start to write the press release, keep in mind that absolutely no one has time to read a full page, single spaced article about whatever it is that you are doing. Today, people have more options than ever before and less time to choose. Get your point across succinctly and quickly.
You want to market these releases to bloggers who can disseminate your information to their networks and other interested parties. The trick here to remember, is don’t just use boring text in your body. Create hyperlinks to enrich and fulfill your press release that tie into your product, or create ways for people to get in touch with your company more easily.
Formatting is key. Use bullet points somewhere in the middle that will draw the eyes directly to the most important factors. Have headings, bold fonts, italics. Make your story pop out and scream, “Read me!”
These suggestions take minutes to do and will yield amazing results. Otherwise, your press release won’t get any snap, crackle, or pop and you’ll be left behind the competition.
Tags: "PR 2.0", article marketing, communication, creative marketing, increase traffic, public relations, social media, social media marketing
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Blogging to an audience is all about putting out good content that will keep readers coming back for more. If you deliver quality over quantity, your audience will be more interested in bookmarking your site, subscribing to your RSS, or signing up for your e-mail newsletter. Make your readers stick and grow your following by creating an e-mail newsletter.
E-mail newsletters are a great way to promote your company, brand, and/or blog. If you have valuable information to share, creating an e-mail newsletter tells people that you have value and authority. Keep it fresh by separating your blog content from your e-mail newsletter so that both are unique. Giving unique content to your audience with your e-mail newsletter also entices them to subscribe, so they don’t miss out on your work.
Try to keep your E-mail newsletters on a schedule. Creating a schedule and sticking to it gives your audience some predictability and something to expect. Try not to bombard them with e-mail so you keep your content in demand, rather than becoming annoying spam. Once a week, maximum, or bi-monthly is a good start.
Offer contests, giveaways, and discounts. Offering something to your audience keeps your content valuable and worthwhile. Keeping your content worthwhile generates traffic to your blog and website that will remind your audience that you are an authority, and you appreciate their loyalty. Another great way to give value to your audience is by offering them sneak peaks on projects that are not officially available to the general public.
Tags: "ezine articles", communication, e-mail marketing, social media marketing
Posted in article marketing, social media general, social media marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
For someone new to social media, it may sound like a foreign language, or hip new lingo terms that seem age specific. In reality, social media is for everyone young and old. Though it may seem that the Gen Y dominates social media, anyone can learn and start using it right away.
Two of the most popular social bookmarking web sites are Digg and Delicious. Social bookmarking sites allow you to save website links online rather than on your web browser. You can add keywords and tags to organize your bookmarks and it can be versatile and helpful in managing many saved links.
Digg
Similar to Reddit, Digg is a sophisticated social bookmarking web site that utilizes user participation to rate web links. Users can share links and vote a link up or down (digg or bury, respectively). The most popular links are showcased on the main page of Digg. This means that depending on your ratability, your site could get potential amounts of high traffic. Keywords are paramount when submitting links. Your link headline should be captivating and grab attention; providing just enough information so users know what it’s about and are interested enough to click and learn more.
Delicious
Delicious is the most popular social bookmarking site out there. By bookmarking sites on Delicious rather than on your web browser “favorites” folder, you get the dynamic community of shared bookmarks by other users. Tag your bookmarks in different categories by assigning keywords to group them with other likeminded users who have tagged their links in the same category. This allows for a great resource for website surfing and getting your websites or bookmarks discovered by other users.
Digg and Delicious have icons you can install on your blog or website to help encourage readers to share your articles. Giving them the option should increase the chances of getting more traffic to your website, by allowing your posts a chance to go viral.
Tags: business social media, communication, Delicious, Digg, social media marketing
Posted in blogging, social media marketing, social media sites | No Comments »
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
In my previous post, I write about the advantages of social media marketing for your business on Facebook. Here, I will focus on the differences between Facebook fan pages and Facebook group pages and any advantages or disadvantages from a business perspective.
The differences between Facebook fan pages vs. Facebook groups are minor, but one of the main advantages to Facebook fan pages is indexing. Fan pages are accessible to the public and can be picked up via search engines. This means that fan pages have a greater chance of being noticed and will show up on your friend’s feeds when you join. Group pages can only be seen via Facebook and does not have public access. While that makes it harder to search, group pages have the viral advantage of being able to send or invite your friends to join; a feature that fan pages do not have.
Another feature unique to group pages is sending private messages. An administrator has the ability to send messages directly to a member’s inbox, while Fan pages can only send messages that show up on the notification bar on the bottom right hand corner of your web browser. While the notification bar alerts you when a new notification is up, users often ignore the feature due to unwanted or unnecessary “spam” messages that often clog up the notifications.
So which option is better for business and social media marketing? While most of the basic features are the same, the key differences between fan pages and groups are major enough to warrant an examination. Fan pages are more versatile because you can connect your blog rss feeds to automatically syndicate, and add web applications. Administrators are not known publically and fan pages do not connect with the administrator’s personal account. The fan page can be seen more like an entity rather than an individual. This makes it more attractive for celebrities, brands, and businesses, who may hire someone to manage their accounts. Fan pages also do not have a member limit while group pages cap out at 5,000.
In summation, fan pages are the better option for social media marketing and a businesses web presence, but groups can work great for smaller ventures related to a more specific cause or social media campaign, such as marketing an event.
Tags: business social media, communication, creative marketing, facebook, Facebook page, social media campaign, social media marketing
Posted in blogging, social media general, social media sites | No Comments »
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
As we’ve already covered, social media marketing is all about connecting with your audience, as opposed to selling products. Think of it as a conversation. The more web presence your brand or business has, the more avenues you have towards conversing with potential customers. Brand awareness, customer service, and engaging with your customers should be your primary focus, but how can you turn that into sales?
Vanity Address
Once you’ve created your Facebook page, you can apply a vanity address that reflects your business name. Use this vanity URL when linking your Facebook page on your blog and/or website. This ensures that your social media marketing campaign is established and credible.
Join the Conversation
Add status updates that provide useful links and content related to your business. Social media marketing is about engaging with your market niche and talking to them on their level, like friends. One of the best places to network in a real world environment is through parties, and social events. Not everything should be about business and finding people through parties establishes your trust as a friend first and business second. Think of Facebook as an online party. You can’t build trust by being aggressive on selling. Talk to your potential customers as friends and the sales will come naturally.
Fan Pages, Group Pages and Events
Part of your social media marketing campaign can include the creation of fan pages, group pages or events. This is another tool to build community around your business and connect with your audience. Create an event page when marketing an upcoming event and use fan pages or group pages to keep people updated on your business.
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are a cheaper alternative to marketing your business. What’s smart about social media marketing through Facebook is that you can use profile information to your advantage by using keywords, age brackets, etc. to market to specific audiences. Through the very nature of Facebook pages, businesses can use target marketing to successfully advertise to specific users.
With these general tips, you can start to build your Facebook web presence in no time. If you decide setting up a Facebook page is too hard to maintain, or would like assistance with your social media marketing, we can gladly help. Are you ready to join the conversation?
Tags: "social networking", facebook, Facebook page, social media, social media campaign, social media marketing
Posted in social media general, social media sites | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Your site will receive traffic from a number of different sources. These sources are called your “top referers” because they refer traffic to your site. Depending on the month, some social media sites will refer more traffic to individual websites than others. For example, for about five months in 2009 Twitter was a top referer to most websites overall. The amount of traffic that Twitter was directing to sites exceeded the amount that Google directed to those sites.
In order for your site to receive top referrals from Twitter, however, your site would need to be optimized for Twitter. This means your Twitter account needs to be linked to your blog or website (preferably both); and you would need to tweet on a consistent basis (at least once a day). People would find your site through your tweets, through retweets of your tweets, and through your profile on Twitter. If you used hashtags in your tweets, then this would be yet another way for people to discover your tweets (and then, your website).
Now Facebook seems to be the top referer for most major sites. Since Facebook introduced their live stream, among other enhancements such as pulling images from links and Facebook Connect, traffic to websites seems to be coming from Facebook in the largest numbers. Again, your site would need to be optimized to receive this traffic. In terms of Facebook, this means you have a Facebook page, you regularly update it, perhaps you run your Twitter stream through your Facebook status that appears on your “wall”. In addition, you can drive traffic to your site with a Facebook Fan Page. And there are countless other ways to drive traffic to your site using Facebook.
But let’s back up a bit. The Google Search Engine was the original top referer on the Web. The whole foundation of Search Engine Optimization is based upon configuring your website and blog to be searchable by Google. In 2009, however, the reality is that Google is not a top referer for most sites. A number of different social media sites are in fact delivering traffic to websites worldwide.
This is not to say that your website should not be Search Engine Optimized. Because your site will still receive a significant amount from Google. If your site has a lot of images on it, then it will receive traffic from Google Images as well.
But because social media sites have recently begun delivering most overall traffic to websites, let’s take a look at which ones are the top referers. (Disclaimer: this is a generalized overview of the top referers I have seen from my own experience.)
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a social media site that gives new meaning to the word “viral”. If one of your pages becomes popular on StumbleUpon, you can see thirty thousand visitors to your site in one day. People who use StumbleUpon are called “stumblers”. Some stumblers looks a thousands of webpages a day, and they have a close-knit network of friends. When one stumbler discovers a page, all their friends find out about it. Usually the page shows up in the “recently popular” category. Before you know it, 100 visits has turned into a 1000.
So how do you get your page on StumbleUpon? First, you can begin using the service yourself. It’s a form of web entertainment. Build a community on StumbleUpon, and once in awhile index a page from your site. Make sure to categorize it properly with the right keywords.
Or you can wait for the stumblers to find your site, but this might take a bit longer depending on the type of material on your website. Most business websites are pretty dry. Social media is all about excitement. What can you create for your business website or blog that would serve as linkbait? How about a YouTube video? Instructive videos are very popular. Or maybe a top 100 list. Don’t try to be cool. Think, “What would most people find useful? What can I offer others that no other site can offer?”
Reddit
Reddit is another social media site that has the potential to deliver a lot of traffic to your site. Like StumbleUpon, either you or someone else posts a link to the webpage of interest. On StumbleUpon, you can write a short review of the site. Reddit is all about brevity. Everything depends on the heading of your link. So before you post that link to Reddit, make sure the heading is just right. Pick a heading that gives enough information to tell people what to expect, but not too much information to take away their curiosity.
Another important aspect of Reddit are the subReddits. Like StumbleUpon, you want to index your page under a category. For Reddit these categories are called subReddits, and you have to subscribe to them before you can submit. Subscription just means you join the subReddit group. You essentially become a follower of the subReddit.
Reddit can really work for you and deliver traffic to your site if you take the time to learn Reddit. Begin by submitting links that are not from your website, add friends, and learn the overall attitude of the particular Reddit.
Both StumbleUpon and Reddit have widgets that you can put on your website or blog. StumbleUpon has a thumbs up widget. When a person comes to your site, or lands on one of your pages, they can thumb it up. Reddit has a meter widget that shows how many people bumped up your article or webpage.
I will cover more social media sites that deliver traffic in the coming weeks. But I wanted to cover the two big ones, Twitter and Facebook, and then two other lesser known social media sites, StumbleUpon and Reddit, that can also send a significant amount of traffic to your website.
Tags: social media marketing, social media sites, top referrals, traffic
Posted in social media sites | No Comments »
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
While the debate has died down recently, about a month ago the Internet was abuzz with the discussion of free goods. The debate mainly came about as a result of Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson is the editor of Wired magazine.
Discussion of the concept of Free on the Internet centered around the “freemium” model of Free, which I will elucidate in a moment; and the old media/new media controversy. The old media/new media controversy is basically where old media representatives such as Malcolm Gladwell from The New Yorker disparage the concept of Free, saying it won’t work and it’s cheating people, namely, hard-working journalists. The new media representatives respond by saying that it does work, many people are benefiting from it, and hard-working journalists will too!
The question of whether Free should or should not occur on the Internet is a moot point. Because it’s already occurring, and not only that, it happens to be the status quo. Most of what you see offered on the Internet as a service is based on the freemium model.
In the freemium model, there are two levels of service. The first level is a basic, free option. This can either be a trial version, or an ongoing free option. The second level is a subscription option, where you pay to receive more features (larger storage space, extra tools, etc.).
Flickr, the most popular photosharing website, uses the freemium model. For free, anyone can register an account, and upload photos to the server. The Pro Account, however, gives you unlimited uploads and storage, statistics, and various other features such as access to your original files. This costs $24.95 for one year.
The idea behind the freemium model is that the 5 or 10% of users who buy the subscription service essentially “pay for” everyone else. Flickr only needs 5 or 10% to break even (rough estimate); and then, Flickr can monetize in other ways, such as advertising.
You are probably reading this blog because you want to learn about how social media can help your business. The content we’re offering on this site is free, another example of freemium. As a consultant for Prechnology, I am paid to write these articles, but you are getting them for free.
If Prechnology decided to do away with the whole idea of having a blog and just sold our social media packages, what do you think would happen? Our clients would most likely go elsewhere for the information, and they would end up going elsewhere for the packages as well.
So the point I’m getting at is: Offer something free on your site. This can be free content, industry or niche-based free information like the Prechnology blog, or it can be a trial subscription or a free product.
Your free offering will attract people to your site, and that’s the important thing. Because before you can build a large consumer base on the Internet, you need an audience and you need traffic.
In an excellent article on freemium and freeconomics, Dan Wilson writes, “Once you have built that audience, you can deliver upsells via freemium models, you can monetize it via advertising and you can branch out into other services which are easier to monetize.”
You might be eager to get traffic to your site, but this is not going to happen until you entice people to return again and again. Free is one way to speed up the process. Check out my post on “The Truth about Social Media Marketing” to learn more about the bigger picture of social media development.
Tags: Chris Anderson, Fred Wilson, Free, freemium, social media marketing
Posted in freemium | No Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
We see SEO and SEM firms, social media marketing firms, firms that specialize in link building, firms that specialize in article syndication, and many other subsets of Internet marketing. To business customers who don’t know a lot about marketing on the Internet, this can lead to confusion and a real difficulty finding the right service provider.
To make matters even more complicating, every SEO firm has a different approach. This was bound to happen. There is so much new technology on the Web that naturally some firms are going to emphasize certain strategies over others. I use the SEO and social media marketing strategies that I’ve developed over the years and found most effective.
Some of these strategies include:
- Creating profiles on the 10 major social media sites
- Regularly using four or five social bookmarking sites
- Investigating niche social media sites
- Cultivating community on social media sites
To keep up with the new technologies, a social media expert is constantly trying out new tools, exploring new platforms, and also utilizing older networks they’ve learned how to mine for traffic. We are looking for what works the best in terms of viral marketing and exposure for a site.
Social media marketing is organic; it evolves over time. To give you an example, I have been submitting posts to StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking site, for about two years. Only recently, however, have I begun to reap the benefits of my submissions. Now, when I submit a post to StumbleUpon, I am almost guaranteed to get traffic—and lots of it. For a couple days last week, I was receiving over 1,500 unique visitors to my site per day.
So how did I do it? Patience and dedication. You learn the best places to submit links for your specific content. You learn how to make viral content. You learn how to properly “tag” your submissions with labels that people can easily find. You also learn the importance of community cultivation. This means communicating with people on social media sites about their projects as well as yours, and sharing similar interests with them.
“Sharing” is the keyword in social media. Collectively, we act as filters. We direct people to the best content; the content that will interest them. We help each other find things.
Identify the niches on the Internet where your business topics are discussed. You can find these niches by running a keyword search on any social media site. Create a profile or many profiles, and start to engage people in your area of interest. Join groups, add comments, and write reviews of other people’s links and blog posts.
Your social media campaign will not happen over night. That is the truth. The good news is that once social media begins to work for you and your business, traffic will exceed your expectations. These services have been created to produce viral effects. Your submissions are at the whims of large numbers of people. You need to assimilate yourself into the social media environment before you can direct traffic to your sites, and promote your own content.
Learn how to create a social media Squidoo lens for your business
Tags: niche social media, social media, social media marketing, StumbleUpon
Posted in social media general | 3 Comments »
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