5 Basics of Social Media Marketing

Glen Allsopp of ViperChill wrote an interesting piece on Search Engine Land titled 15 Fundamental Truths About Social Media Marketing. I am not going to repeat all 15 of Glen’s truths, but I did want to highlight a couple of the points her brought up.

You must get involved in the top social media sites to understand them thoroughly: My thought process behind this was that the only way to start understanding the type of content that works is by being exposed to the stories, titles and content on a daily basis.

You can talk about social media marketing and reputation management all day, but until you actually go and use the major social media sites on a regular basis, all that talk is nothing but theory. You have to participate and try different things to really understand how each site works. StumbleUpon is very different than Digg and you cannot know what the differences are unless you participate in these sites.

Not everything you try will work: I’ve spent hours on a content piece that had all the hallmarks of popular social media content. It was a list post, was relevant to current events and had a catchy title. Nonetheless, it didn’t make the Digg homepage, received minimal votes on StumbleUpon and no bloggers really picked it up. Just because the content is good it doesn’t guarantee success.

This is such a great piece of advice. I have been really surprised over the last year at what succeeds and what doesn’t. I have had Digg and StumbleUpon submissions that I was thought get little traction, and then I have seen some other posts make the home page of Digg and crash my server.

Social media is about trying different things and seeing what works and then conducting an analysis to see what worked and what didn’t. Overtime you develop a play book of the type of content that works on each social media site. But the only way that you can put together the play book is by trying different things and having the analytics in place to measure there success.

Digg failure doesn’t mean campaign failure:I dislike the fact people think Digg *is* social media marketing.

So often people equate Digg with social media marketing. Yes Digg is an important site, but it a site that is dominated with males under the age of 24. That is a great demographic if you want to reacj Mac users, but if your audience is Female and slightly older, then you will be much more successful on Sk*rt than Digg. So just because an idea does not work on Digg does not mean it is a bad idea. It might mean that you are not appealing to the right audience.

You must be a real user:When getting staff to start using these sites I encouraged them to forget about the client side of things. I simply asked that they vote for what they found interesting whether it be fashion, cars or music and then add content submitters as friends if they wanted to read articles on the same subjects.
Engage in communities: Whether this be on social networks, forums, blogs or social news sites it’s important to really embrace and engage with communities.

I combine these two points because I think there is a lot of similarity between the two. One common mistake I see people do who are interested in social media is that they create a Digg or StumbleUpon account, submit their site and then wonder why they did not get lots of traffic. Social media is, as the name says, social. In order to succeed you need to participate and engage in the communities.

If you are interested in getting StumbleUpon traffic for example, I would recommend spending the next 3-4 months building up your account. As Glen says, vote on topics that interest you, add friends and become part of the community. Once you have done that, then you can start mixing in some of your own sites with your other submissions.

Social media marketing is only one strategy:Although it can bring great results, it shouldn’t be totally relied on and certainly should not replace any existing SEO or PPC campaigns.

I agree so much with this point. I believe that social media should be a component of your online marketing strategy. It does not replace SEO or PPC. It works with these other marketing tactics. In our case studies we have found that social media marketing can have a tremendous impact on your organic search results.

3 comments : January 30th, 2008 : SMO, Social Media Optimization, Social Media Marketing

Save to del.icio.us (3 saves) • Digg This! • Stumble It! (1 Reviews)
Is MySpace A Google Killer

It was July 19th, 2005 when Robert Murdoch surprised Wall Street when he spent $580m to purchase MySpace, So how does the investment look 2 1/2 years later?
When Murdoch bought MySpace it was predominately a US social network. Today it is a worldwide force with 24 local versions. Besides introducing new musicians and playing host to amateur filmmakers, MySpace is also signing artists to its own record label and developing online video series. Earlier this month it introduced a content guide called MySpace Celebrity.

All these changes have worked out well for MySpace. With an estimated 110 million monthly active users, and more than 1.3 billion page views a day, MySpace has become a favorite of advertisers.

Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for Pali Research was interviewed by the New York Times recently and he said expected MySpace to have around $800 million in revenue in fiscal 2008, mostly through advertising. That $580 million purchase price looks pretty cheap now.

Chris DeWolfe, the co-founder and chief executive of MySpace is working on changing the image of MySpace.

“Some people still perceive MySpace like it was in early 2004, as a niche place for scenesters in New York and Los Angeles. That’s how it started, but it’s become very mainstream,” Mr. DeWolfe, 41, said. “It’s about consuming content and discovering pop culture.”

As part of its makeover, MySpace is starting to resemble more and more a traditional media platform like Yahoo or AOL than a traditional social networking site. Peter F. Chernin, the president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, called MySpace a “contemporary media platform” and said the site existed to “create content and connect people to one another.”

There is no doubt that the purchase of MySpace by Robert Murdoch was a smart business deal. The site dominates the social networking space in terms of visitors, page views and advertising revenue.

What will be interesting to watch in the coming twelve months is how MySpace develops as a media platform. MySpace has the potential to match the growing media platform that is Google. At the moment Google and MySpace are business partners, but I expect that relationship to be challenged as MySpace continues to grow.

Remember that since the MySpace acquisition Murdoch has purchased the Wall Street Journal. An advertising platform that covers Music, Celebrities, TV and Finance could be a Google killer.

Article Source: http://social-media-optimization.com/