Social Media Marketing question

[mscopeland]

I know there's a lot of confusion when it comes to marketing using social media.

What tips can you give the people who are new, don't really get it, or are using social media wrong?

Here's my tip:
When someone follows you in twitter, do not do an auto DM(Direct Message) trying to get them to a sales page or to join your maffia, etc. Introduce yourself and send them to a page to learn more about YOU. Remember, they're not there to buy, they're there to build a relationship.

[Dennis-White]

Using social media sites are cool, they allow you to get personal and build relationships with sites such as twitter, facebook, and so on but there are a ton of other video and content social media sites as well that you can use to get content and your self out there as well with links back to your blogs, pages and sites...

I say use em, rely on them alone no, but use them in conjunction with your other marketing efforts definitely.

[hecbay]

Here I tell you a strategic technics to really put your social marketing to work:

Step 1: relevant information
If you have relevant info for your niche, you will have a network more likely to be visited. Think about what kind of net you want to create. Something interesting, new, not very common that satisfies the needs of your niche. Learn from your customers and most important - Let them talk- Let the people tell you what do they want.

Step 2 - Promote interaction
Promote and provoke interaction between users. Think about this. If in your facebook you only have two friends is not as fun as if you have 100. Cellphones are not fun if you have only one friend to call to. That's the reason why videphones still won´t work. Why do I need one if I have nobody to videocall with. Got the idea?

Step 3 - Create the community
make people to visit you every day all time. Every day must be something cool and new. People will assist to your site if they know that they can find something cool everytime. Think about youtube. There is always something to watch.

Step 4 - Intimate with your clients
People visit you, interact with each other and are part of something. Now is time to get a little closer. They will have enough trust to buy you stuff.

Remember always:
-Know better that anybody to your clients
-Talk about real benefits instead of technical advantages
- Keep low your expectations (What??) yes. Sounds contradictory? Well, when you start a social network and you offer lots, is more possible that you won´t be able to fulfill all those great expectations. Instead, keep them low and surprise your visitors anytime you can with new and cool stuff.
- Once you have lots of registered users or followers, make it your net public. Invest on big advertising. All your customers will feel important and will recommend mouth to mouth the net.
Dont´forget that all this take time so follow up, monitor and track it everyday!

Good luck!!!

[ramkarthik]

1. Create a feed for your name, your blog name and/or your business name

You can use twitter search and create a feed for them all and add it to your feed reader. Respond to everyone who is talking about you/your blog/your company.

2. Create Google Alerts

Do the same thing I said above in Google Alerts also.

3. Don't Auto follow

There are too many spammers in twitter now and you don't want to be following them.

4. Give and you shall receive

In any social media site, you have to give before you can receive. If you give to community, people will trust you and start helping you.

5. Understand the community

There is no use spending all your time in one site only to find that this community doesn't help your blog/company grow in anyway.

6. Never Spam

This is very basic and everyone knows it (and yet, few people do it). Don't do anything against a site's TOS.

Hope this helps
Ramkarthik

[freudianslip27]

Cool stuff!

The biggest thing I've found is that you need to make sure you understand the needs and interests of the crowd that you are attracting, and deliver good stuff to them.

If you give them a GOOD reason to join your club, they just might pass info about you to their friends, and then the viral train can really take off.

Matt

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by mscopeland

Remember, they're not there to buy, they're there to build a relationship.

Which is exactly why I see it as having limited effectiveness as compared to more direct methods that specifically target buyers like SEO and PPC.

[chrisgarrett]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Which is exactly why I see it as having limited effectiveness as compared to more direct methods that specifically target buyers like SEO and PPC.

It depends how well you build an engaged audience. Even if you only look at pure, direct monetary ROI terms my social media time investment has been well worth it AND when combined with an SEO strategy so the two techniques support each other ... well, put it this way, I am very happy with the results I get

[mscopeland]

I have to agree with you there Chris.

The thing is, there's no way to "measure" how well social media marketing does. So many people can recommend you or forward something of yours that you may not know where the sales are coming from.

Social Networking is about building relationships. If you're a web designer and we build a relationship through the social media landscape then.... If someone mentions they need a web designer, I recommend you. and that recommendation comes highly targeted because the person trusts me enough to ask me and they will automatically trust you because I recommended you.

Measure ROI like that? You really can't... Not like you can with PPC. PPC is a 1 on 1 action... search/click
Relationships are more trusting and the value of that trust is huge. Because that 1 PPC sale is just that, 1 sale. Where if someone KLTs you, then you've got a returning customer and maybe even an evangelist!

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by mscopeland

The thing is, there's no way to "measure" how well social media marketing does.
.................
Measure ROI like that? You really can't...

Well, at least you feel good about doing it I guess.

I bet you can tell my education and work background is in accounting, statistics, computer programming and logistics and not marketing.

[chrisgarrett]

Originally Posted by mscopeland

Measure ROI like that? You really can't... Not like you can with PPC.

Yeah you can.

Twitter->Tracking URL->Thank You Page

Ta-da and ka-ching.

[chrisgarrett]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I bet you can tell my education and work background is in accounting, statistics, computer programming and logistics and not marketing.

Well I left school at age 15 but my background is in computer geekery too, but that lead to marketing (branding,advertising and direct marketing). I stopped programming in 2006 but still have a programmers system mindset

You will find most of this stuff is actually trackable and measurable with some lateral thinking

[Chris Pambos]

Hi,

My social media marketing tip of the day is that you should never direct traffic from any of your social media network profiles to a squeeze page or sales letter.

If you want to list build, direct traffic to your blog and have your opt-in form placed strategically throughout your blog, some strategic places include:

* Top Right Sidebar
* Bottom of Every Post
* Slide Up Bar

Regards,

Chris Pambos

[mscopeland]

Originally Posted by chrisgarrett

Yeah you can.

Twitter->Tracking URL->Thank You Page

Ta-da and ka-ching.

True, but a lot of people want to know how many people will click my link if I send it. - Easy Twitter->tracking URL
How can you measure how many people other than you who are spreading your link around?
That's what I was getting at. I suppose you can see the referring page of the click.
But knowing if someone who KLTs you because of social networking and referred someone directly to you, that's hard to measure.

If someone goes to someone else's Twitter page, they may not be following them but your link would be in their feed and they might click, but that person wasn't spreading it by a RTing.


For example, "Hey Tom, do you know any good SEO guys?" "Yea Mike, Bob is a great guy, go to SEOBob.com"

So I guess on Twitter you can track mentions of certain keywords but what if it was on one of the thousands of other sites?


In reality, I guess it doesn't really matter, traffic is traffic. Yea, I like to know where it's coming from and what marketing efforts are working best, but I know the relationships I have with my followers is worth more than a click.

maybe
1 follower = 2 clicks
1 follower who KLTs me = 5 clicks
1 follower who is an evangelist = 10 clicks

OK.. I'm going crazy thinking about all this... lol

[mscopeland]

Originally Posted by Chris Pambos

Hi,

My social media marketing tip of the day is that you should never direct traffic from any of your social media network profiles to a squeeze page or sales letter.

I agree Chris. However there are a lot of people who think they should go to a greeting landing page with an optin to get even more info. Like a social landing.

[shoonra]

I promote my personal blog on twitter, and occasionally announce a new site, or even a hub page and such. I imagine these make up no more than 5% of my tweets - the rest are personal and interactive and I am actually making friends of twitter (several of them I have met irl already - some more than once). I enjoy Twitter for the social value it provides - the marketing benefits are just a bonus.

Since I treat these people as "friends" I find that my "promotional" tweets are welcome. I sometimes add a "pls RT" and it's nice to see how many people help out by retweeting them - just because they like me and want to help out. I do the same for others btw.

Last, but not least, I try to create interesting web content and promote these via interesting tweets. For example, I make a promotional page selling bakugan balls, and I tweet that with a message to parents, joking about the stupid little things our kids are addicted to. It comes out as a nice personal tweet, and people tend to RT it, along with my page link.

Hope this helps. First post here btw, so hi everyone

[tessmac9708]

One of our management team Matt Laclear has given these insights. I know that they have helped a a lrage number of people market themaselve successfully.

Tips and Tricks To Putting An Effective Profile Together - StartUp

Graham