Social Media Marketing is going to be a term that you start to hear about more often now than ever before. You have already heard of Web 2.0, which describes the trends being used within the World Wide Web of technology and web design that adds creativity, secures shared information, collaborates information, and induces the functionality of the web.
So, what is Social Media Marketing? It is primarily internet-based but also ties in with non-internet based methods such as word of mouth advertising. Social media marketing is all about collaboration between people. It's about participating with everyone and sharing information. Branding yourself through social media channels by engaging and interacting with existing consumers or potential consumers.You can build links within the activities in order to receive attention, which would get you large amounts of traffic to your site(s).
What Social Media Marketing is not :
Most individuals confuse it with advertising on a social networking site. It is also not about spamming, copying certain links and spamming it in discussion groups and forums.
Why do I bring any of this up? Active Rain is certainly the best place that I have found to share information with each other. And in many cases, it gives me a good method of getting in front of the consumer without leaving my home office. But in the last 6 months or so, I haven't been participating as much as I have wanted. In some cases I was busy, in other cases, just burnt out from blogging or networking here on AR. But thank god, well, in this case, the AR gurus....for featuring certain posts. Even though Jeff Dowler is on my list of blogs that I subscribe to, I even miss those at times. But Jeff wrote this post the other day that got featured.
Okay, so he didn't write it, he reblogged it. But what was great about it was that it opened my eyes to how important social media marketing will be. And it was about Pat Kitano & Kevin Boer who started a 12 session webinar series about the hows and whys of social media marketing. They not only have added a few extra 1st sessions for those that missed this, but have given a 50% discount to AR members. For information on this, please click : Social Media Marketing webinar
So, how is social media marketing media different than e-mail marketing or mail marketing?
E-mail marketing - mail marketing - other forms of marketing
You can e-mail people in the form of drip campaigns. You can also e-mail or mail newsletters to previous or potential clients. How many of you even look at or read newsletters or through junk mail away?
Another form of marketing are pop ups or banner ads. But how many click onto these? And don't these cost you money to put on other sites?
Social Media Marketing
You promote yourself in multiple online social media venues. People find you by following you on these social networks. Okay, many of us know that we can be searched online through key words that are included in our blogs. Do you know that Google searches Tweeter and other social networks, just like it does with Active Rain?
In speaking with Pat Kitano, he gave us an example. He used many different social networks and sent out about 136 links to his blogs. He received an additional 5,000 hits just because of that. Talk about increasing your readership.
Summary :
Do you know that social media is only 5% of how we market ourselves or interact with prospects. This will double very quickly. In the webinars held by Pat and Kevin, they will not only give you a crash course on what media outlets are available, but :
- they will teach you how to use specific networks and how to set them up,
- some tips and secrets when using them,
- how to set up the tools to monitor these networks,
- how to get your voice out there in a matter of minutes (having one link end up in several different social networks at one time),
- and so much more..
Keep this incredible stat in the back of your mind..... the use of the internet has grown 114% from 2000 to January 2007. And one other key tip that I learned from Pat in the very first session.... don't be afraid to let anyone follow you, unless they are scary looking... lol Those were Pat's exact words. People will follow people who will follow some of those that follow you. Think of the endless audience that you could command.
If you want to read a good story about someone that doesn't know about social networking with an opinion, please read this from Chris Elizabeth Griffith - Not Social Networking 2.0 And just a FYI... this post is based on my opinion, yet some facts from researching from true professionals in related to these topics.
And as Josef Katz said in a comment below, "you can't put all your marketing 'eggs in one basket'" .. I wrote about the different ways to network in a post earlier. Please read :
For those of you that are Active Rain members who do not follow me on here, you can subscribe to me here : Follow Jeff Belonger
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Jeff, yes social networking is changing the way we do business.