Marketing professionals are feverishly obsessed with “social media marketing.” Social media includes websites where huge numbers of users provide their own content and create connections and relationships by sharing information and following each other’s updates. There are dozens, and perhaps hundreds of these sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Spoke, ecademy, Classmates.com, Friendster and Flickr, where people exchange business and personal information, status updates, photographs, videos, news articles, political views, resumes, sexual interests, sports opinions, recipes, health facts and endless amounts of other data.

It doesn’t end there. Social media marketing also includes the use of blogs, online videos, discussion forums and creating ways to allow customers to provide feedback and ratings on the pages of your websites. And a lot more. It’s tremendously valuable and some organizations have done a great job getting real value out of their social media marketing efforts.

Without a doubt, there are massive marketing benefits available to marketers who can figure out how to harness the attention and preferences of audiences using social media tools. Everywhere you turn in the marketing world, people are promoting the value of engaging social media for businesses purposes. I quickly went through a week’s worth of emails to find invitations to attend or view whitepapers, webinars and conferences. Here is a sampling of what I’ve received over the last seven days:

• How to Develop a Social Media Strategy That Works For Your Brand
• Connecting Constant Contact and Social Media for Internet Marketing Success
• Free webinar – Webcasting + Social Media Increase Attendance: An UNLEASH09 Case Study
• The Best of Both Worlds: How to Effectively Leverage Social Media Relationships with Real-Time Collaboration Tools
• Email Gone Viral: How To Extend Email Reach Through Social Sharing
• 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarketing Study
• Service in the Time of the Social Customer
• Understanding Your Online Reach
• Generate a Buzz for Your Business Through Social Media Marketing. Convert that Buzz into Revenue.
• 5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

Now, I subscribe to several marketing newsletters, but there are hundreds of others and this list represents just a week of emails — and I probably missed some. Marketing via social media is white hot — the level of excitement is off the charts.

Social media, however, cannot yet substitute entirely for other, more traditional forms of marketing. Recently, I was on an “expert panel ” at a marketing event and the audience was breathlessly excited about social media. At one point, all of us panelists were asked to comment on the value of this new channel and when it was my turn, I stated that while I thought social media would someday provide enormous marketing value, I was concerned that people were focusing too much effort and attention on it. I said that, in my view, there was probably no huge “first mover advantage” in figuring out how to market successfully via social media and that it was important to continue to utilize email, direct mail, direct sales, telesales, advertising and other channels for now. I said that people should make sure they stayed current with what was happening in social media and they should be constantly experimenting, but, since no one has yet cracked the code on measuring the results of these new opportunities, it was important not to get distracted from demand generation methods we currently use that we know are effective.

These statements won me a large number dirty looks and I felt like I’d just announced that I was predicting a major comeback in Yellow Pages advertising. Several people in the audience probably dismissed any notion of hiring my company to do marketing consulting for them and I think there may have been murmurs of organizing a lynch mob.

The odd thing is that I actually am very excited about the potential of social media marketing and we use it in my company everyday. I just think that its value as a form of demand generation isn’t clearly understood yet and, since it’s not very measurable, it flies in the face of responsible marketing for most companies to devote inordinate amounts of resources to it.

We have a tendency in marketing to assume that new channels make old ones obsolete. For example, when email began to gain in popularity and effectiveness, many marketers concluded that direct mail was on its way out. Oddly enough, email marketing, to some extent, became a victim of its own success. Spam grew at a faster rate than quality email, and soon customers’ in-boxes were loaded with so much garbage that system administrators all over the country became more aggressive at filtering out unwanted email. Unfortunately, a lot of good quality email, much of which customers had subscribed to, got caught in spam filters. Deliverability rates of email marketing campaigns dropped precipitously and the whole medium has lost some of its effectiveness. The net result is that direct mail, good old fashioned printed offers sent through the USPS, has made somewhat of a comeback. The death of direct mail was highly exaggerated.

Something similar is likely to happen to social media marketing and I think it’s already started. For example, I get many emails telling me that people have started to follow me on Twitter. These emails contain no information about my new fans, just a cryptic user name, which I can click on if I want to see who it is. What I have discovered is that a growing number of these “followers” are providers of porn and are probably signing up to follow tens of thousands of unsuspecting Twitter users like me. If this continues unchecked, I will not be a Twitter user for long because, as it turns out, I am not actively seeking more junk mail in my in box. I suspect you are not, either.

My own company has yet to generate any business from our social media efforts. “Old” methods like telephone calls, emails, speaking at conferences and networking still drive most of our business. When I started Real Results Marketing five and a half years ago, I resolved to go through my contacts and either email or telephone people in my network every month. To this day, most of the business opportunities we uncover happen through this type of work and former colleagues are still the richest source of consulting deals. It’s a real struggle sometimes to make myself take time out of a busy day to make those calls or send those emails, but they’ve proven so vitally important to our revenue stream that I don’t dare let up on these efforts.

I realize that most businesses can’t rely on the founder’s professional network as a primary form of demand generation. Bigger companies have their own tried-and-true methods for driving growth. Your company may utilize a sales force, telesales personnel, advertising campaigns, sophisticated database marketing initiatives and other tools for creating sales opportunities and I’d argue that the importance of those approaches hasn’t diminished one bit in the face of social media growth.

Whatever has worked for you historically should still be the primary focus of your sales and marketing. You certainly want to stay plugged in to social media and, by all means, attend workshops, conferences and seminars on the subject. It might even be a smart investment to devote a headcount or two to doing nothing but experimenting with these exciting new marketing tools; here’s a brief but highly compelling article on how Citrix, which makes desktop and server utilization products, uses social media marketing.

Someday, someone will master how to market effectively and measurably via social media. Once that happens, all of us in marketing will need to learn how to adapt those discoveries to our businesses and use them to drive sales and profits. Until that time, however, marketers should focus most of their resources on the tools they understand so they can live up to their primary responsibility of driving profitable, long term growth for their employers.

I have joked that I have become the leading advocate for “antisocial media marketing.” I’m actually a big supporter of these exciting new channels — just not at the expense of marketing techniques that have been proven to work. Nonetheless, my less extreme position on the subject probably means I won’t be voted the most popular speaker at marketing conferences in the future. I’ll just to have to be sure I stay one step ahead of the lynch mob and keep making my networking calls month after month.

I hope your business is thriving. You may be hearing from me soon.

Author: Ian Heller
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin expert

This is the Internet we are talking about and fads are the staple of the day. With each new big thing appearing and disappearing at lightning speed, it is no wonder that there was some reluctance to fully embrace social media channels that managed to hover and thrive on the periphery of the Net.

But times are changing. The recent deal-making by Twitter to work with Google and Bing to dish out fresh tweeting content for search engine indexing is only the beginning of a social media shift.

Bing also recently worked out a deal with Facebook for indexing that social networking website’s content as well. Word is that Google is in similar negotiations with Facebook as this article is being written.

Seeing that Google and Bing are willing to pump resources and money into the social media space is enough to convince most skeptics. However, there are probably still those that can’t quite put together why this type of move marks a shift in the social media movement.

Portal Wars

Allow me to set the stage. We are still in the Information Age. The Internet, while being a great social tool, is still at its core, a haven for information. Search engines, when skinned down to their bones, are merely information gatherers and dispensers. Google’s patents, for example, are firmly grounded in information retrieval.

Since its commercial inception, the battle on the Internet has always been for eyeballs, and at the heart of the eyeball fight is the portal war. During its history, the portal war has revolved around leveraging information or content to attract and hold eyeballs.

Now the portal war has evolved somewhat over time, but the goals of this fight are still essentially the same today. The current number one website in the world according to Alexa Stats is Google. Keep in mind that this Alexa ranking is for the U.S. version of Google. Other Google websites, like Google Japan and Google India also rank prominently in the world’s top websites.

This little tidbit of information is very significant. It reveals that Google is atop the heap in the portal wars. But Google is not alone in this regard. Other search engines are right behind, Yahoo is at #3 and Bing is at #5.

We all know that Google has made its reputation on providing the best answers to visitor questions. It does this by producing the most relevant search results based on a user’s keyword query. Its separation from the pack to now control a 70% market share of search engine users all hinges on this one strategy.

Google’s success in this regard has been so resounding that Bing recently changed its algorithm to essentially mimic Google in generating search results. With Bing recently working out a deal with Yahoo to begin powering their searches early next year, the Internet landscape is poised to pit Google and Microsoft together in the largest portal war we have ever witnessed.

A Matter of Speed

And this is the crucial point where the social media shift is occurring. You see, even with all of their current eyeball monopolies and market share, the search engines still face a profound challenge. That challenge is to stay relevant.

In our present Internet time, relevance is becoming a matter of speed. This speed is partly related to actual information retrieval, indexing and redistribution, processes the search engines continue to strive on improving. However, even with the most rapid indexing infrastructures, the search engines continue to function as dynamic archives.

This is good and bad. Good in that the search engines serve as vast directories of information resources. Bad in that these directories are massive, and even with the latest and greatest in automated information retrieval techniques, suffer from an information latency. Information latency is the delay it takes a search engine to aggregate, recompile and reproduce its data.

Early in the Internet segment of the Information Age, it was enough that search engines served as dynamic archives, or vast resources of slightly decayed information. However, with the rise of the social media space and in the face of more intense competition, the speed of information has changed.

Search engines like Google and Bing must keep up. During its reign as the top portal, Google has been a champion of archived information relevance. However, the demands of social media and a change in our behaviors, to mobile devices for instance, require faster results.

Google, for example, has always struggled to keep up with the headlines. News portals, like the New York Times, have always served as better sources for current and up to date information. The blogs, tweets and profiles of social media give participants instant updates on their favorite people and topics. To stay relevant, the top portals had to devise a way to keep up with the times.

The Social Media Shift

It is at this point that we can address the social media shift. To do so, we must return to the social media space so we may fully appreciate its significance.

When it comes to the top websites in the world, social media outlets are no slouches. As of this date, the #2 website in the world is Facebook. Twitter is at #13. YouTube is #4 and Blogger is #7. While the latter two are owned by Google, the significance of this type of media is abundantly clear.

But let us take a closer look at social media. Always remember that, in the information age, content is king. The social media space isn’t exploding because it is simply a place for us to get together. The social media space is exploding because it is one of the best ways for people to stay informed with new content. Whether through producing and sharing videos, blogs, tweets or photos, the social media space is at the heart of the present and the Inter-Now.

So to resolve the problem of speed and win a victory in the portal war, Google and Bing have brokered deals with two of the world’s top social networking websites to gain access to their information, to tap closer into the pulse of the present.

The social media shift is therefore the mutation of the social media space into a replacement of the archive with the content of the present.

Author: Steven Meinking
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Information

Social media marketing gives you an edge over larger competitors. Studies show that most companies are not yet adopting social media, leaving a sweet gap for the “little guy” to do big business in that space.

Follow these 10 simple tips to create your own strategy for Social Media Marketing success:

1. Map Out Your Social Media Strategy

What is it you most hope to accomplish with your social media marketing plan? What response do you expect from your target market? Ideas to consider in your overall objective might include:

-Branding
-Networking
-Exposure
-Inbound Links/SEO
-Relationship/Trust Building
-Customer Relations (think @comcastcares on Twitter)

2. Connect With Your Target Market

Get an image of your ideal customer or website visitor clearly in your mind. Who are they? What are they searching for? What do they want and need the most? What do you feel they expect from you through social media communications?

Consider what they experience on their end in everything you do. They are the person that you want to attract into your funnel, so you want to make a great impression – and also include a strong, specific call-to-action.

3. Offer Consistent, Quality Content

The content that you post to social media properties should be both consistent as in regular updates, and also consistent with your overall message or objective.

If you are an MLM recruiter for example, provide quality resources for recruits. If you own an ecommerce gardening site, offer gardening tips. Whatever your message, you want to make it consistent across the web.

This helps you achieve your branding objectives, and allows you to create the perception that you want people to have of you or your company. Anyone who follows you online should easily be able to fill in the blank: (You/Your Company) is known for ___ .

Being consistent with your message and your branding also lends toward your goal of relevance and theming when it comes to SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

4. Focus on Content, Not Marketing

Most people get this backwards. If you focus on valuable, high-quality content then that content will do the marketing for you.

You shouldn’t have to digg or bookmark your own content, but rather focus on writing such great content that your readers give it an unsolicited digg or stumble for you.

Your job is to write, and provide easy access to social media services where your readers can share your content with their friends & groups.

When people like what you have to say, they will share it – period. And when they share it, the search engines will take notice. Write top quality content & updates, and let the rest happen naturally.

5. Caution! Do Not Over-Optimize

Social Media Marketing can help you achieve top search engine rankings for specific keyword phrases. But be careful… because there is such a thing as over-optimization.

Using the same anchor text everywhere that you link to (or request a link to) your site leaves a ‘digital footprint’, throwing up a red flag that you may be trying to manipulate the search results (or PageRank).

Avoid this by using natural variations in anchor text for the links that point back to your primary website. You need a certain number of “click here” or similar links to give balance to your optimization strategy.

6. Stop Linking To Your Home Page!

Social media is about micro-topical conversations, so consider how you can introduce internal offers or pages of your website into these conversations.

This will keep your groups and followers engaged in the topic at hand, and provide higher value to your readers.

These deep links, or links pointing to internal pages on your site or blog, help it gain authority in the search engines as well. All other things being equal between two identical websites, the one with more deep links will outrank the other. This also gives you more exposure in the search engine results, since your internal pages will begin ranking for specific relevant keyword phrases.

Tip: Your home page may not be the best link to share on your Profile while networking on social sites. Consider linking to your “about me” page instead for a more personable introduction to you and your site.

7. Provide a Valuable Resource

There’s a reason its called Social Media, and not Self-Promotional Media. Keep that in mind when you consider your social media marketing plan.

If all you post is self-promotional links and requests, you will eventually become a part of the “noise” and ultimately be filtered out by your target market. They may not unfollow or delete you, but they will begin to scan over your posts and tweets without even realizing it.

Avoid this by becoming a valuable resource in your niche. Share links to domains that you don’t own. And I don’t mean your own Squidoo pages or Facebook profiles – I mean domains you have ZERO association with. Provide value to your groups by sharing relevant links and resources.

You mean, you want me to *gasp* promote my competitors?! Yes – and become friends with them too. Interlinking and networking is powerful!

8. Social Networking

To truly achieve your social media marketing objectives, you need to do some social networking as well. Forget the word “competitor”. Other publishers or webmasters in your niche will be your best friends in the social media landscape!

Locate every competitor on your level (or within reasonable range) and create an “inner circle” of friends or business peers. These are people you can interview or be interviewed by, exchange links with, joint venture with, etc. Stop looking at them as competition, and start looking at how you can leverage each others’ position in the marketplace!

Tip: Don’t ask for favors. And don’t flaunt the favors you do. Simply follow, comment on, link to, or otherwise become “known” to select publishers in your niche. They will notice… and generally begin to reciprocate. Given a little time the relationship will form naturally and be incredibly beneficial on both sides.

9. Build Rapport

Get involved in discussions, reply to blog comments, ask for feedback (and then respond to it and act on it!). People want to know that you’re a real person, and not just “a company” – or worse: a bot spitting out links and sucking in cash.

Don’t be afraid to have an opinion or to express your thoughts on hot topics within your niche. Your unique voice in the market will attract your ideal visitors and customers.

Social media gives you an opportunity to be personable. An ecommerce site has its limits when it comes to establishing trust and building long-term customer relationships, so use social media as an opportunity to make a real connection with your target market.

10. Link Freely – And Don’t Apologize For It!

This is somewhat of a combination of tips #3 and #7. One thing that really makes me cringe is the 2 words “shameless plug” – promise me you wont ever use that phrase!

The people that follow you, subscribe to your updates, or ‘friend you’ on social media sites… want to hear your latest news and tips. If they don’t, they’ll quickly unfollow you – which is fine. This is not a numbers game or a vanity contest – it is a means of syndicating and socializing in a professional yet personable way.

There is a right and a wrong way to link to resources and content on social media sites. The wrong way is to say “read my blog post” or “visit my website”. The right way is to share a cool link (whether its yours, or something of interest to your readers from another website) and to open a discussion on that topic.

Have a clear objective, be a valuable resource, and use social media properties in the way they were intended to be used. Anything else will get you filtered out, unfollowed, banned or blacklisted… and ultimately be a complete waste of your time.

Done right, following these 10 simple tips, social media marketing can currently grow your online business faster than any other means.

Author: Lynn Terry
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera News

In part 1 of this article we analyzed email. We detected its flaws and inefficiencies. We also concluded that it is still the “only game in town”. In other words, although social media represents the new way of communicating, it is not ready yet!

So, what is so different about social media that makes it the natural successor of email?

No, it’s not MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or any other tool currently out there trying to take (and keep) a place under the sun. It’s the concept! What is really new about social media can be described with a single phrase:

The power of deciding who you want to communicate with before any communication takes place!

That’s it. That’s the revolution. Oh, wait… that’s the big deal?! Yes, that’s huge!

Think about it. With the concept of selecting communication partners comes the concept of community. When you chose the people that you want to communicate with (and they accept!), you can group them into communities: “Friends”, “Business”, “Tennis players”, etc. You can now send private messages (emails?!) to any person in any community or post messages/information to a whole community. Bear in mind that you can make one person a member of as many communities as you want. A tennis player can also be your friend as well as a coworker in your business.

Marketers will now have to create communities of people that may be interested in their products and, one way or another, entice them to join in so they can communicate their product promotion messages (subject for another article!).

And spam is over! People trying to promote brides from some exotic country will now have to build a community of people that are actually interested in that kind of romance.

Risk of viruses and malware spread is greatly reduced. Remember, you can always trace the source of your messages since you had to formally accept the sender prior to any communication. Of course, if you accept just about anybody into your communities…

Spoof is basically impossible. I just got recently a message from “Facebook” telling me that they had to “reset my password” and “I had 24 hours to login and reinstate all my private information”. It was a spoof message that looked like it was sent by Facebook. This is not possible in the social media world where, if I want to receive messages from Facebook, I will have to join the Facebook community. Any other Facebook look-alike community cannot send me messages because I didn’t join them!

Information overload is easier to manage. Of course that under this new way of communicating you will still be flooded with information. But now, private messages are separate from the “broadcast” ones and they will all be neatly organized by communities. You may build a community for your company, send private messages to any of your coworkers while, as a manager, you can post a memo for the whole company.

2. So what is the problem with Social Media?

Most (if not all!) the articles that I read about social media (and I try to read as many as I can) make the same mistake: They criticize the tools!

“Social media is bad because Facebook this or MySpace that…” In general, the toughest social media critics focus on two major areas:

Lack of privacy

Within a community, anybody can post anything for the whole community to read. There are horror stories about people that have been fired or relationships that ended after incriminating photos were posted on social media.

There are two ways that this can happen: (1) Somebody posts a compromising photo of another community member with malicious intents. Well, don’t blame social media. This could also have been done via an email with the photo attached or by posting it on a popular web site. (2) A photo was posted with your name as a “tag” (search word). The social media tool (e.g. Facebook) picks up the tag and publishes it on all communities that you belong to. But this can only happen if you allow it. If you set Facebook (e.g.) to show tagged photos only to yourself, that’s what is going to happen.

Another privacy issue is the fact that Google is more and more picking up social media postings and showing them on the search engine. The correct tools will also allow you to stay away from Google…

Most of the people that I communicate with are not on social media

Right! That is the problem.

More, they may be on social media but not on the tools that I subscribe.

I am personally on Facebook and Twitter and I have to admit that 80% of the people that I communicate with may be on Linkedin, MySpace or nowhere else but certainly not on “my sites”. So what do I do?

Email, of course! But that is how we started this conversation wasn’t it? Email is still the “only game in town” because email is still the only universal communications tool available.

That leads us to the real problem with social media:

The concept is right but the tools are not ready yet

3. The future of social media

Every emerging technology has confusing debuts.

In 1878, a well known communications company internal memo stated that “This `telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”

Throughout history, the same happened with cars, computers, televisions and it will keep on happening with anything new and truly revolutionary that comes out; when it comes out.

Social media is no different.

Today, social media is at its birth. It exists in a highly fragmented environment (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Meetup, Tagged and many, many others) where multiple players change their dominance impact almost every month while new players test the waters to see if there is any niche that can still be successfully explored.

In the current environment, you may have to resort to different tools to achieve different objectives and, in the process, repeat yourself endlessly since the integration between the existing tools is primitive at best.

While this is happening, the “web owners” (large organizations such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo…) are watching, learning and getting ready to play.

In its beta versions, Microsoft Vine and Google Wave have been advertised by its publishers as the next thing to watch in the social media world.

The reality is that the market requires a more integrated and robust environment dominated by companies that have the clout and the power to establish industry standards. Before that happens, we will be watching a series of short lived experiments.

But the concept of social media as a community based communications engine is here to stay and I believe it will end up integrating the “postal” type solution that email represents.

And email, as we know it, will be dead.

4. Should we wait?

On a personal side, it’s a personal decision. In a business point of view there is never any value in being the last one to arrive anywhere and there is already a lot that can be accomplished with what is available.

According to a Deloitte study, 30% of American companies use social media as part of business and operational strategy.

The bottom line is simple: People are out there talking to each other and, if you are not part of it, they are not listening to you!

Start now! Using 15 minutes per day of your time you can build a Twitter community, exchange industry information and establish contacts that, in time, will prove invaluable to your business.

Because if you always wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.

Author: Pedro Machado
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Gadget reviews

Sometimes keeping up with the torrential flow of cutting edge information can be difficult, but this is where this list of the Top 10 Social Media Blogs comes in handy. Each and every one of these blogs contains a wealth of knowledge and it’s all current. It’s not the same jargon being repeated and recycled over and over again. By keeping yourself at the forefront of the social media game and positioning yourself as an authority by contributing to these top 10 social media blogs you are building the foundations – laying the bricks, so to speak – for your eventual and perpetual success online.

The top 10 social media blogs are listed below. Be careful not to get overwhelmed by the vast amount of knowledge contained in them. Remember to take things slow, one step at a time. If you learn something which you can implement straight away, then do it! Don’t think after you’ve just read some crazy new secret “Oh, that’s a good idea… I’ll apply that to my business tomorrow,” and then keep trawling the blogs for the rest of the night. As soon as you learn something, put it into action. Once you’re done with that, find another strategy to implement. Step by step you will slowly but surely begin to see concrete results!

So without further ado, I give you… The Top 10 Social Media Blogs!

#1 Mashable.com – If you’re looking for the best place to come to for social media news, this is it. It is the worlds largest site dedicated to this purpose. With more than 12 million hits every month, it will definitely boost your inside knowledge on new sites, trends, technologies and services. Come here to find critiques on the newest stuff and get some great tools for your social networking campaigns.

#2 AllFacebook.com – As the name suggests, this blog is all about Facebook. Here you can learn about the newest applications and general news. You can even read predicted trends about the future of Facebook, an excellent way to stay on top of the game. If you need to know anything about Facebook, this should be your first stop.

#3 Twitip.com – Similar to #2, this blog is all about Twitter. There are so many helpful Twitter tips including things like how to get the right followers, how to build relationships and turn them into your real friends, how to build massive followings without getting booted off the system, etc. There is also a wealth of useful marketing information related to Twitter, such as personal branding, effective marketing methods and even useful Twitter tools to help automate your business.

#4 SocialMediaToday.com – This blog is a community made up some of the best social networking and web 2.0 thinkers alive today. There is no limit to what you can learn here! Most importantly, this is a great place to learn how to create an interactive social community. A pretty neat perk: once you have registered on this site, you can begin feeding your existing blog posts (assuming you already have a blog) to the live content flow of SMT and create posts directly on the site, increasing your exposure to a highly valuable community! Now THAT is pretty darn cool.

#5 Techipedia.com – This blog is run by Tamar Weinberg, a social media consultant and techie geek. She truly has some information worth hunting down, and her blog is an amazing resource. One of her recent posts was “How to Create the Perfect Fan Page.” Now who in social media wouldn’t want to know info like that? For free? She is a freelance writer and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, who specializes in social media consulting and strategy, blogger outreach, reputation management, and search engine marketing (SEO, link building, and Pay Per Click Marketing). If you’re interested in social media, you should be checking out her blog.

#6 CollectiveThoughts.com – Another invaluable blog made up of superstars. Each member of this community is a well-known authority or upcoming figure in their own respective fields, and they all share a passion and thoroughly developed understanding on social media. So thinking collectively, they created Collective Thoughts, a place to share their fantastic knowledge.

#7 BrianSolis.com – Brian is a pioneer as he brings his own unique view to the world of social networking. He takes both approaches of traditional marketing and social media and meshes them together to create one heck of a powerful marketing machine. This blog made the top 1.5% of all blogs tracked by Technorati-which means it really is worth checking out!

#8 DoshDosh.com – This one’s a bit different, not what you would call your typical social media blog. But don’t let that fool you, because here you will find some amazing resources for cutting edge online marketing and blogging tips, social media and Web 2.0 strategies. I personally like the artistic use of their images and graphics in the various posts.

#9 ScottMonty.com – Scott is the head of social media for the Ford Motor Company. That’s right, the big corporations are realising the potential in social media are beginning to stake their claim. On his blog, Scott shares his perspectives on various topics – the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web – for marketers, agencies, the enterprise and the individual. Not only will learning from him benefit your campaign, you can build your connections as you expand your sources – and Scott is a very good source.

#10 The Viral Garden – Mack Collier is a social media consultant, trainer and speaker. He has been actively immersed in social media since 2005 and is known as a guru in the field. He has some great info on his site where you can learn about the latest tools, tips and trends to enhance your productivity, profitability and online presence.

So there you have it, the Top 10 Social Media Blogs, places where you can hunt down valuable information to help take your business to the next level. Take full advantage of these resources as they will help to brand you as an expert in social media and put you in position to become a top earner in this industry.

Author: Boio Bess Daro
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Duty on LCD/Plasma TV

Yet, one of the main complaints businesses cite about staying on top of their social media marketing efforts is the time involved to do so. They feel that someone has to be tied to the computer 24/7 to make the effort effective. Fortunately, with today’s mobile applications and technology, social media marketing is being reborn as a mobile experience – a mobile social media marketing initiative, so to speak.

As more people realize and embrace the fact that social media marketing is a real time experience rather than a “wait till I get to my computer” experience, they’re taking advantage of the processing power today’s mobile phones have to offer. So while real time does mean you have to have your computer with you at all times, that computer is now your cell phone, not your laptop or desktop.

Why should businesses focus on mobile social media marketing? Consider this: Right now around the world, 1.1 billion people use the internet, 1.4 billion people watch television, and 2.2 billion people use mobile phones. So if we look at the power of social media going mobile, we quickly see that it has the potential to be more powerful than television watching, simply because it’s interactive and with you at all times.

The Driving Forces

Both technology and people are driving the prevalence of mobile social media. One of the basic human needs since the dawn of time is to connect with others. Additionally, today’s increased processing power, bandwidth, and storage available on mobile devices enables people to have better audio and video capability on their phones. This means people can communicate with their phone more effectively, in a way that goes beyond your basic phone call. And any time technology allows you to communicate and connect better, you have a revolution. From smoke signals to telegraphs to telephones to cell phones to the mobile social media, all are evolutions that cause revolutions.

Other driving factors include globalization and localization. Globalization means you can now connect to the world with your phone. You don’t need a laptop or a television to see news feeds from around the world. At the same time, it’s local. You have access to local events and happenings. With permission, you can see where your friends or employees are at any given time. So your phone can deliver much more than just weather forecasts; you can also know what’s going on around you at all times.

The Case for Mobile Social Media

Because the phone was designed for two-way communication and social media marketing is a two-way dialogue, it’s a natural extension to have cell phone applications for mobile social media – programs for your cell phone that allow you to view and post to various social media sites.

With mobile social media, we’re no longer just sharing information; we’re disseminating knowledge in an organized way, getting feedback, and gaining additional knowledge to help us grow. Between text messages, tweets, blogs, and other social media posts, we’re seeing a shift in how people discover, read, and share news, information, and content. We’re learning information in real time before the evening news or morning paper reports it.

If your company is using social media marketing but has not yet gone mobile with it, you must do so right away. Here’s why:

• It expands your internet footprint. You can only monitor and respond to so many Facebook, Twitter, and other social media posts from your desk. However, when you can post from your phone, you can say what’s on your mind whenever you want. As such, you expand your internet footprint and make it easier for prospects to find you.
• It improves your search engine rankings. Each post you put out on the social media networks points back to you or your company. That increases your listings on search engine results. So where you might have been listed 1,000 times, you’re now listed 3,000 times.
• It establishes you as the expert. When you can post your information and ideas at any time, it will happen more often, which builds your reputation and credibility.
• It improves communication and feedback. Many companies are monitoring people’s tweets on Twitter and posts on Facebook. If they notice people who have problems with their company, products, or services, they find out about it right away and make changes in real time. This, in turn, builds positive relationships with customers.
• It drives a steady stream of prospects to your business. All of the social media sites are becoming business friendly, enabling you to create a business-oriented presence. As they’re becoming more business friendly, they’re going to be very mobile friendly. It’s the next iteration.
• It fuels content generation. Because you’re micro-blogging and doing Facebook entries, you’re creating content and getting it out there. And since content is king these days, you definitely need a way to keep your information flowing into your prospects’ and customers’ hands.
• It supports decision-making. You can make better decisions if you’re monitoring what’s going on in social media about your industry, marketplace, etc. And when you get these updates directly to your phone, you don’t have to wait until Monday morning when you get to your office to make a big decision. You can make it and implement it in real time.

Go Mobile Today

In short, the mobile era takes all the benefits of social media marketing and puts them in your hands at all times. It also frees you from your computer so you have more time for other activities.

As the business world evolves, our ways of communicating with prospects and customers must evolve too. Remember, it used to be about distributing content; now it’s about getting people’s attention and engaging with them. It used to be about gaining shelf space; now it’s about gaining mind share. It used to be about mass marketing; now it’s about niche marketing. It used to be about trying to control your customers; now it’s about using influence and reputation to generate desired results. When you incorporate your mobile device as a key way to achieve your business objectives and attain these benefits, you open your company up to a whole new world of sales and profits.

Author: Daniel Burrus
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Pressure Cooker

Before engaging in any social media activity, be sure to conduct yourself like the decent person you are so that your efforts will be worthwhile. Social media is all about engaging and connecting with your target audience. Only through genuine engagement you will really experience the full potential of social media. By following the tips below you will not only make great connections but you will maintain or enhance the way others see you and keep your online reputation squeaky clean.

1. Don’t be overzealous to start sharing. Take a little time to familiarize yourself with the different social media sites, their rules and policies. Start sharing only when you feel you have familiarized yourself with these.

2. Don’t start without a plan and a clearly defined goal. Delay your social media initiatives until you truly grasp the concept of social media and you have a strategy for your product, service or brand. Put some thought into what you hope to achieve through social media and keep this question at the back of your mind to guide you through everything you do in the social media realm.

3. Don’t start if you cannot commit. Once you understand what social media is all about are you are ready to begin, be prepared to dedicate time to the process. You don’t want to start, develop a following and have your initiatives fall by the wayside because you don’t have the time to keep up with the continuous engagement process needed to succeed at social media.

4. Don’t be a phony. No one likes a phony and they are easier to spot than you may think. Don’t hide your real identity. Social media is all about engagement and relationship building. How many valuable relationships do you know that have been built by anonymity? Just be your nice, sharing, intelligent, thoughtful, charming self and you will be sure to achieve your objectives for engaging in social media.

5. Don’t spam. Now why would you want to engage in activity that is not only counterproductive but could get you banned or blocked from your friends or followers? Spam sucks. Remember, social media is all about engagement. Not annoying others. No one wants to read tweets or other content stuffed with keywords or receive some automated update every five minutes on your product or service. Engaging in excessive self-promotion can also cause your friends and followers to see you as being too spammy. Spamming is a sure-fire way to get blacklisted.

6. Don’t be a stalker! Yes, people do actually stalk others on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. I don’t believe that these people set out intending to stalk other it’s just that they may be a bit sensitive or easily offended. So, if you invited someone to become your buddy and they declined the invitation, just let it slide. It is nothing personal, I bet. If you become insistent that they befriend you and keep resending the invitation you run the risk of tarnishing your reputation. After all, you don’t want to know as that stalker guy!

7. Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know or know well. Ever heard the saying show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are? The same pretty much applies in social media. When accepting friend requests be sure you know the person you are accepting them from or at least check out their profile. Don’t just accept request from every Tom, Dick or Harry that wants to befriend you. Do some screening. You don’t want to befriend someone who is not interested in sharing but you want to spam you with stuff you have no interest in.

8. Don’t be mean. If one of your friend puts up or shares something that you don’t particularly like or agree with, say nothing if you can’t say it nicely. The last thing you want is a war of words. You’ll end up looking foolish if that person retorts in a nasty way and an online fight ensues. This sort of behavior will cause your professionalism to be brought into question.

9. Don’t engage in malicious behavior. Don’t gossip, tell lies on others, assassinate the character of others or post pictures or things that are likely to embarrass others and make you like an immature jerk online. It’s not nice and you will not only hurts others you will tarnish your image. Remember the golden rule: do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. It also applies in social media.

10. Don’t behave like a psycho. As my English friend Sadie would say, don’t be a nutter. No one likes to be in the circle of someone who comes across not so right in the head. Social media is not the place to curse out your ex, tell your roommate how much you hate her or explode on the chap from the sandwich shop who put too much mayo in your Panini this morning. Sharing how you may feel is fine if it is done tastefully and in moderation but social media is not the place to for going on a rampage getting things off your chest.

11. Don’t be a snob. Not responding to comments on your posts or replying to others is a guaranteed way to come across looking like a snob. Yes, you may not be able to respond to all or respond at all sometimes but the objective is to engage not alienate.

12. Don’t act salesy. It’s all well and good to share on a product or service that you think others stand to benefit from but at all cost avoid coming across as if you’re peddling stuff. When promoting your service or products, don’t come across as an overzealous car salesman. People are turned off and quick to de-friend others who are too gung-ho about sharing their affiliate links or pitching some product, brand or service.

13. Don’t be manipulative. Don’t befriend other just to have them in your circle or on your list if you don’t intend to share or interact with them.

14. Don’t be fail to be engaging. You come across something worthy of a commendation or sharing, by all means, feel free to vote, ping or retweet it. Don’t just vote for, retweet and share content from your friend’s or people you like. Social media is all about sharing and if it is worthwhile, then by all means, share it.

15. Don’t over-automate. Don’t set up an account on Facebook or Twitter but never login in and; participate there because you’ve automated all your post through Ping.fm or some other means. You want to spend time on the sites you are submitting content to and interact with others over there. Doing this helps boost your credibility and helps others get to know you.

16. Don’t assume social media marketing will turn everything you do to gold. If your product or service is mediocre, engaging in social media will not change that. It may just make a mediocre product or service more obvious.

17. Don’t be narrow-minded about the views of others. The objectives of social media are interacting and sharing. If you’ve submitted an article or blog post and someone made a valid point or brought to your attention something worthy of mentioning, thank them for their comment. Don’t get offensive or defensive and act like a know it all.

Author: Carlana Charles
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: PCB Prototype & Manufacturing

But there are some recurring fallacies and misconceptions out there. Many companies are finding that these tools don’t live up to the hype, especially small businesses. There are a lot of challenges that aren’t immediately apparent. Are you considering Twitter, Facebook, et al as part of your marketing plan? Before you jump in, keep these myths in mind:

1. Social media is cheap or free. Yes, many social media tools are free to use, including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, the social network building tool Ning, and content aggregators like StumbleUpon and Digg. There are many free blogging tools, too, like WordPress, Blogger, FriendFeed, and Twitter. But incorporating them into a corporate marketing program requires time, skill, and money.
2. You can make a big splash really quickly. Sure, sometimes this happens. Social media is great if you’re already a star, but there really isn’t any such thing as an overnight sensation. For example, tweets can drive traffic to articles, Web sites, Facebook pages, contests, apps, videos, etc. — this is easier if your audience already cares about your brand or if you have a truly original product or idea that excites people to the extent that they want to share with their friends. But it takes a lot of time and dedication to keep your content fresh.
3. You need to be on all the big sites. Most brands that have succeeded with social media sites generally focus on just a few of them. Just because the media says it’s cool to tweet doesn’t mean it has anything to do with your business. If you plan to frequent social networks, don’t spread yourself too thin. The companies that choose their weapons wisely and give it their all are the ones that succeed in the social space.
4. If you create something that’s great, people will find it. How’s that supposed to happen? Unless you can drive traffic to your social media effort, it’s akin to a tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it. Many tools can drive traffic, including Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, blogs, and SEO, but word of mouth trumps them all — one friend telling another, “Hey, check this out!” is very powerful.
5. It’s for kids. Contrary to the perception that social media is for tweens, teens, and 20-somethings, older demographics are rapidly evolving into this space. According to analysis by iStrategyLabs, Facebook experienced 276% growth in users aged 35-54 in 2009 and is its fastest growing segment.
6. You can’t build quality relationships online. The thinking on this goes that it’s a waste of time connect with people online that you don’t know in real life — that it’s a pointless exercise that doesn’t lead to lasting relationships with your brand. It’s actually quite the opposite: Social media enables you to be face to face with your target audience. Even if they don’t turn into paying customers, you still gain valuable insight into what they think and what they react to.
7. It gives away content and ideas you should be charging for. Simply put: The more you give, the more you receive in social media. You need to let go of the idea that all the content you produce is is proprietary, engage with your audience, and encourage them to share what you’ve created.
8. It’s a fad. The drumbeat about social media has become deafening. Yet many marketers remain skeptical, hesitating to expand budgets and expend resources on a craze. But social media is a fundamental shift in communication — it isn’t just a new set of tools, but a new sphere of networking, communicating, living, and organizing. It has become intertwined in our lifestyles, so it’s here to stay.
9. Anyone can do it. It sure sounds that way, doesn’t it? There are a lot of people, from whiz kids to more experienced marketers, who claim to be social media experts. Some even portray themselves as gurus. But how many of them have created successful social media initiatives for clients? To be effective, a campaign must integrate social elements into all aspects of marketing, including advertising, digital, and PR. Theory is no match for experience, and the best social media marketers now have years of experience incorporating interactivity, forums, viral video, apps, social networks, blogs, user-generated content, and contests into the marketing mix.
10. It’s a cure-all. While social media is a great tool for online reputation management, it’s not a panacea. Don’t get so wrapped up in the concept of of the social Web that you ignore the other problems with your marketing strategy. Social media is another in a long list of tools you should leverage for brand messaging.
11. You can do it all in-house. You need strategy, tools, contacts, and experience — a mixture not usually found in in-house teams, who are often tempted to use the wrong tools or to reinvent the wheel… which leads to (you guessed it) lousy results. How many in-house teams have the expertise to conceive and implement a social media campaign AND drive traffic to it via blog advertising, SEO, Twitter, etc?
12. Social marketing results can’t be measured. There are a variety of methods and tools you can use for this, and more become available every day. You can monitor blog comments, mentions in the media, traffic stats, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, comments on your content, real-time blog advertising results, click-throughs to your Web site. The tools are out there, and the number of people who know how to aggregate and interpret the data is growing.

What other myths are out there about social media? What lessons have you learned as you’ve tried to get your arms around social engagement as a marketing tool?

Author: Pamela H Dyer
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Make PCB Assembly

People do not meet the way they used to. Sure, we all still attend meetings at church and at city hall and at our children’s teacher conferences, but more and more people are congregating online. Did you know that, according to iStrategyLabs, Facebook’s United States’ user base grew by 144.9% in 2009? Some estimates put all Facebook activity worldwide at as high as 20% of all internet traffic!

Facebook, and increasingly Twitter, are the places people are going to find out what is happening in the lives of their friends and family. Furthermore, with the explosion of fan pages, users are seeking out news from businesses, organizations, and causes that they support.

Friends and family meet regularly on Facebook. Colleagues and like-minded people use Twitter to share ideas throughout the day. Professionals are connecting on LinkedIn. Flickr and YouTube stream photos and videos to the world eternally. And blogs are maintained for topics as varied as pro football officiating and crocheting. All this is going on 24 hours a day, every day of every year. Is your business connecting with people where they are now?

2. Yours is a small company.

You own a small business, perhaps a local party store or an independent insurance agency. Social media is intriguing, but you cannot see the benefit to a business of your size. Let’s say you own a small party store. You check out the largest chain pharmacy’s Facebook Fan Page. They have 433,000+ fans. Do you have 433,000 customers?

Or say you are an insurance agent. After spending some time on a national insurer’s Facebook fan page, you find you’re joining 16,600+ others. Do you have 16,600 clients?

Small businesses need revenue streams more than ever. One cost effective way to generate business is through social media marketing. People who become your fans and see regularly what you post on your fan page are more likely to do business with you than a larger company with whom they might not share a connection.

Social media does not have to be a daily task, but it certainly should be something used weekly. A small business might post community news, events in the lives of staff members and their families, cross-promotions with other local businesses, and content related to its products or services.

3. Yours is a large company.

You are a president of business development for a large, globally-known company. The board of directors has asked you to find new ways of connecting with prospective customers. Let’s go back to the example of chain pharmacies. The number of fans is staggering – 433,000 – when you consider how few fans Competitor #1 has (5,967) and that Competitor #2’s page (88 fans) is apparently created by someone outside the company. If you are in business development for the competitors, do you think there is an urgency to use social media effectively?

Social media is essential to large companies in the 21st century. Modern consumers are discerning and intelligent. They want companies to be responsive and transparent. Social media allows your company to hear from and speak with customers, address their concerns, and generate positive feelings about your brand.

4. Your client base is mostly local.

Your company is successful on the local level; it sustains your business and you’ve reported moderate growth for several years. But lately you have wanted to drive business on a larger level.

Social media is a place to go “remote” while never leaving home. The beauty of platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is that you can reach a global audience from wherever you are. These sites will allow your business to be seen and known by thousands and thousands of people who might otherwise never know it existed.

Your business can promote its products and/or services to these new potential customers. You can inform them of your past successes and current specials. You can tailor orders easily without having to spend time on the phone or meet in person. Social media will introduce you to new people and render services to them more efficiently.

As well, local support will grow for your business so long as you focus some content on items of local interest. Producing social media content about civic news, high school events, community fundraisers, and the like will keep your base loyal and growing.

5. Your client base is mostly remote.

Your company sells mostly to customers who are remotely located from you. You engage people mostly through your website. Business is good, but you haven’t made much progress with local customers. Perhaps you are a new business in a region that has long been faithful to a competitor. Social media is a way to bridge this gap. Your company may simply suffer from a lack of exposure. A strong presence on social media sites is evidence to prospective customers that you are interested in their ideas and that you are responsive to their concerns. These platforms of “open conversation” can showcase your business as part of a mutually-supportive community.

6. Your friends (and their friends) are your best advocates.

Who are you more likely to trust when he says you should buy a car from a particular dealer – someone you just met on the street or your friend of 20 years? We hope you chose the latter. If so, you are like 99% of the people in this world who believe the word of their friends because they share a common past and have trusted them in other situations.

A company needs friends or fans or followings (depending on the social media platform). You need not fear that you are breaching a social contract with friends so long as your social media is about your customers, their needs, and conversations driven by them. Strangers don’t want to be “sold” anything and neither do your friends.

Social media is about conversation and community and relationships. Developing strong relationships does not mean you cannot promote your business, but it does mean you have to listen more than you talk.

7. Money goes where people go.

You can’t afford not to participate. The perception of social media is that it is for young people. Sure, Facebook and MySpace began as platforms for college students and high school kids. However, according to iStrategy Labs, Facebook users of the age 35 and older are now 30% of the entire user base. Additionally, in 2009, users who are 55+ grew an astounding 922.7%. In fact, every demographic grew in 2009 except college users.

So everyone and their brothers are using Facebook and other social media platforms. Grandmothers are sharing pictures of grandchildren on Flickr. Auto dealerships are bringing the showroom to the customer’s home with videos of cars on YouTube. And the local coffee shop is “linked in” with a new coffee bean distributor with lower shipping costs. People are taking their lives and their money to these virtual worlds. Are you there to meet them?

Getting Started Yesterday

Social media, while not ubiquitous to business, is by no means still a mystery. There are thousands of businesses of all sizes who “get it”. Is yours one of them? If so, that is great and we’d love to share insights with you. If not, how will you get up to date? Where do you begin?

Facebook is the proverbial tip of the social media iceberg. The best advice we have is: choose one to three platforms and commit yourself to producing content on each one consistently. If we had to suggest three, we would probably choose Facebook, LinkedIn, and a company blog. However, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and many other sites have their merits. Depending on your size, time constraints, and budget, you may want to hire an outside agency to handle social media content. Whichever path you choose, we welcome you to the conversation.

iStrategyLabs is a social media solutions company. Their Facebook research can be found by searching their name in a Google search.

Author: Mike Feldkamp
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

Yet how have social networking sites like Facebook changed the way online marketers advertise online? For one, they’ve made our jobs much easier. Facebook is the ideal medium for advertising within an environment that’s viral by nature. These online social directories use an interactive format that allows users to create a personal profile, connect to other users, and share content.

In a sense, these users have already effectively segmented themselves, coming together through like interest groups and connecting through content. These behaviors, which are inherent to social media and enabled by Web 2.0, create valuable networks of targeted and specific demographic groups. Now more than ever, the “Net Generation” is becoming involved in social media and presenting online marketers with the chance to market to predefined segments of online users, positioning branded messages on sites where these users spend time online.

Moreover, these social networking sites are growing at an exponential rate, adding more and more users from more diverse backgrounds. Initially, Facebook was created only for college students, but last year, it was opened to anyone with an email address. According to Microsoft, Facebook is the sixth most trafficked site in the U.S., and now has over 73 million registered users in 40,000 different collegiate, high school, work-related, and geographic networks. This represents a 530% growth rate over one year alone.

The tactic through which advertisers communicate with these segmented online audiences is known as Social Media Marketing (SMM). SMM has become a popular tool for search engine optimization (SEO) thanks to its unique ability to improve website visibility, name recognition, and brand awareness among specific online audiences through the acquisition of a network of relevant links.

So what opportunities does Facebook present for targeted online marketing efforts? Among Internet users ages 18-24, Facebook placed first on the list of favorite sites in Youth Trends most recent survey. Over 70% of females ages 17-25 indicated that Facebook was their favorite site in terms of time spent online. For males, this figure was still a powerful 56%. These demographic is clearly technology-driven, thanks to their growing up in a culture that considers time online an integral aspect of daily life. More than half of those surveyed visited Facebook at least once a day, logging an average of 35 minutes on the site.

Furthermore, these users are familiar with online environments and are adept at seeking out and finding specific pieces of content they’re interested in. Thus, social networking sites, especially Facebook, present online marketers with the opportunity to engage users with advertising messages at critical moments of relevance.

So how can we utilize social media marketing to effectively engage these elusive audiences of young adults? Below are several ideas on how to utilize social media marketing on Facebook.

• Connect Through Groups:

  Facebook has an infinite number of shared interest groups which users join for a myriad of reasons. These groups cover an unlimited number of subjects and interests, from marine biology to snowboarding to politics to rap music to Italian food. No matter what your interest or target market, there is a group for you. Take it from me. I’ve been a registered Facebook user, or “Facebooker” since 2003, and I’ve seen a group for everything, literally. Many even have a local focus, like Denver Broncos fan groups or Denver Chinese Students Group. Each of these groups has its own page with a forum, discussion board, photo gallery, etc. This is the best place to position messages meant for specific niche audiences, as you’re almost guaranteed everyone who sees it fits your target profile. In the past, when I was trying to drive traffic to a video site I was working for, I placed descriptive and enticing links to relevant videos on the group’s “wall,” or discussion board. I saw great results as many of the members of this particular group, which was devoted to skiing, followed these links to watch videos about their favorite sport, skiing.

• Connect Through Applications:

  Recently, Facebook has opened up its platform to outside developers who have created innumerable applications, ranging from fantasy stock picking simulators to video games of “beer pong” to world maps marking desired travel destinations. Users can add as many of these applications as they like to their profiles, creating opportunities for marketers and developers alike to subtly integrate marketing messages into these applications and their functions. Many developers have already done so and are not doubt reaping some major benefits, not only through increased brand awareness but through traffic driven from Facebook, which many have bridged to their own sites.

• Connect Through Content:

  Because Facebook allows users to post videos, images, links, photos, and more, advertisers can seamlessly utilize social media marketing strategies to connect with these groups through content. By positioning your content where your target audience is, you can be assured your brand will be right in front of their eyes as they interact with your message. Facebook is a repository for an endless amount of consumer data, what many experts have dubbed “a community in a box.” So why not leverage this data by getting involved? Connect through content.

• Connect Through Events:

  As Facebook has grown, it has added an “Events” section where users can post information about upcoming events and then invite their Facebook friends to attend. The entire section of events is searchable, and users can quickly locate events they’re interested in, find the host’s name, location, time, and even a description of the event. What’s more, Facebook gives each event its own page, where users can RSVP, decline to attend, or even post information on the event page’s public discussion wall, like what to wear, what to bring, etc. This presents social media marketers with a valuable opportunity to post events and then invite people that are most likely interested in attending. In my own experience with this medium, I’ve created events for clients and then posted information and invites within groups that align. For example, when promoting an upcoming reggae concert or college football game, find as many groups related to reggae music, college football, music and sports that you can, and post the event information on their group discussion boards to ensure that anyone who’s interested now knows and attends.

• Connect Through Mobile Devices:

  Just this week, Facebook announced that it has partnered with RIM, or Research In Motion, and their BlackBerry device. In addition to BlackBerrys, Facebook is accessible to a wide range of other mobile devices. This presents valuable opportunities for advertisers to reach potential customers on a local level, positioning their company presence at the moment of relevance.

Still, Facebook’s explosive growth hasn’t been without challenges. In response to criticism from a plethora of groups, Facebook recently added additional security measures in an effort to better protect private information. In addition to assuaging privacy fears, this is sure to encourage more users to join the site and share more information about themselves. Yet this will also force social media marketers to be more innovative and creative when identifying and locating target audiences.

As you can see, Facebook users have taken care of the segmentation process, connecting themselves through content and shared interests. These behaviors, which are inherent to social media and enabled by Web 2.0, create valuable networks of targeted and specific demographic groups. Now more than ever, the “Net Generation” is becoming involved in social media and presenting online marketers with the chance to market to predefined segments of online users, positioning branded messages on sites where these users spend time online.

The company I work for, Fusionbox, a Denver Internet marketing company, uses social media marketing to combine the objectives of Internet marketing with the capabilities of social media sites and Web 2.0 technologies. Click here for more information on social media marketing [http://running-with-the-bulls-seo.blogspot.com/2007/09/social-media-marketing-bridging-gap.html].

Essentially, our SMM services create powerful forms of viral marketing that leverage the large audiences and user communities of social media sites. Whether on MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Flickr, or any number of others, SMM revolves around the creation and connection of users to companies through unique content.

For this reason, SMM can be utilized to build a network of links, spread brand messages, increase visibility and awareness, and even manage your company’s reputation online. After all, these social media sites each have millions of registered users, grouped into like-interest communities. Now all you have to do is discern where your target audience is congregating online. What more could a marketer ask for? No other channel allows companies to declare their identity, service offerings, value proposition and location within such a targeted environment.

Our team of experienced and innovative social media marketers will effectively position your website content in a targeted digital space where it will be seen by those you want to see it.

Fusionbox is a leader in applying Web 2.0 technologies to the Internet marketing domain. Our services have been aptly deemed Web Marketing 2.0 because of our ability to connect clients to customers by engaging the market and initiating conversations through social media.

Author: Nick Yorchak
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cool mobile gadgets