Understanding How Social Media Helps Your Business Online
If you're looking to grow your presence on the internet, you're probably hearing all the talk about social marketing, viral marketing and the like. You've probably browsed through YouTube, Facebook, Digg, Technorati and tons of other online social outlets only to be confused how these all tie together to create a "buzz" around your site and your brand. Don't feel bad, it's not an easy task, but it doesn't have to be intimidating. Understanding the vehicles that can deliver your brand online is the first step to building your social brand. Let's go through a few.
Blogging
Blogging is the probably the most popular way to dip your toe into the social activity on the web. Most blogs are free to setup, easy to use, very manageable and search engines love them. A few of the most popular blog platforms would be WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal. Personally, WordPress is my favorite. This platform is very customizable, scalable, hosted locally or through wordpress, has tons of plugins and is very well supported. Feel free to use a few in order to find out what you like the most, but if you're looking for a robust platform out of the box, WordPress is a wonderful social platform to get started with. It will grow with your business allowing you to expand effortlessly into the social web.
Forums
Forums are another wonderful way to expose your business to the masses. While most forums are tightly moderated to make sure there are no spammers filling their sites with marketing posts, they allow you to reach specific groups of web users with information about your business in an informal setting. You can also establish relationships with other people in your industry that may become link partners or social evangelists for you. Forums are a great way to test your products or solutions against the social market to gauge interest for what you're selling. If you create a buzz...hold on for the ride!
Main Stream Social Outlets
This is probably the section you've been waiting for...wait no longer. Main Stream Social Outlets like YouTube, Digg, Technorati, Myspace, etc are very highly used sites that can be detrimental to your online persona if not used properly. I say this because in the realm of these types of online societies you can be made into something you didn't want to be very quickly.
Don't get me wrong, these networks can be leveraged to create a massive following for your brand and company. They also give you many avenues into the online social marketplace and an ability to drive traffic to your site with relative ease. However, without properly measuring the repercussions of driving users to a website that's not ready for the masses can severely tarnish your online reputation. Don't do that.
The positive light here is bigger than my pessimistic warnings, hold on, I'm not a complete social grinch.
Let me redeem myself.
YouTube - is an amazing and easy way to create a buzz around your site and brand. Not only can you use YouTube to give the online word a view into what you're all about. You can also use YouTube to host your videos and embed them into your blog or website. That's an awesome way to create and retain interest on your site. Video is being used more and more on the web and YouTube is a cost efficient way to spice up your site and promote your brand with video media.
Digg - this is one of the heaviest used social networks for fresh relevant media. Not only does this site receive oodles of traffic, but the viral capacity of this site is stunning. Go to labs.digg.com to view their social network grow and intertwine in real time. It's amazing to watch. Once you've seen that you'll be excited again about social networking...i promise.
MySpace/FaceBook - these networks aren't spidered by search engines and the links are irrelevant to SEO. So, why are they so important in the social world? Facebook offers highly targeted marketing to specific groups of users online. You sell T-Shirts that are targeted to 20-30 year old males that like rock and roll and cycling, you say? Done. Oh, and you need them to be specific to Bend, Oregon. No problem. Myspace on the other hand is more highly used by the younger generation so your presence there may or may not be relevant, but the amount of eyeballs that potentially could see your brand is tremendous.
Both of these networks also allow you to setup accounts that you can use to network into these spaces. This also is a great way to informally introduce your business to the online social community to gauge interest and brand perception.
I'll be introducing more in my next post so stay tuned!
Tags: SocialMedia, Social Marketing, web site optimization, colorado, seo, blogs, blogging, forums, WordPress
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