It’s easy to tell someone that they should have a blog or they need to be on Twitter, but what is the benefit to them and their target customer by being involved with social media?
Social media marketing can mean different things to different people because the three terms that comprise “social media marketing” – “social”, “media’, and “marketing” – each have very broad definitions.
At Accelerated Online, we use three specific activities as part of our social media marketing strategy:
- Blogging
- Social networking
- Social bookmarking
Let’s take a look at each these activities and some ways you can use them to increase your business’ online visibility.
Business Benefits of Blogging
There are actually three components to use blogging effectively as a social media marketing strategy and each should comprise a third of the overall time that you allocate to blogging. The three components are:
- Reading blog content
- Commenting on blog content
- Writing blog content
Each of these components are related because they help with the process of creating an effective blog that is visible and interesting to your audience.
Reading blog content from other people in your industry is important because you need to understand what’s relevant to your customers and get a feel for others’ points of view. When you comment on blog content, you present your own point of view and begin to build a reputation as someone who is credible and knowledgable in your particular field. Finally, writing blog content is where you can publish detailed articles using your keyword phrases that are going to help increase your company’s online visibility. The first two are important because without them you won’t have a good feeling for what people are already talking about online, and it will be hard for you to create your own blog postings.
Business Benefits of Social Networks
For most businesses, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the most important social networks to consider. Besides creating an optimized profile for your business, you need to actually use the social networks for them to have impact on increasing visibility for your business.
How should you use them then? Here are three specific ways you can participate on the social networks:
- Distribute your blog postings
- Answer questions and make comments
- Ask questions
Each of these activities helps to spread the word about what you can do and your area of expertise. Number 1 is especially useful because you are creating visibility for your blog content and related compelling offers that can benefit your social network followers.
Business Benefits of Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Delicious are full of people looking for content that helps answer a question or satisfy a curiosity. This is the third channel where you can create awareness about your area of expertise by posting interesting and relevant content that you find as well as interesting and relevant content that you author.
When you take the time to read something and find it useful, chances are that others online will receive the same benefits. Adding social bookmarks to your own blog postings and making it easy for your readers to post your blog content to social bookmarking sites is a great way to “prime the pump” and leverage your content.
Putting It All Together With Inbound Marketing
Blogging, social networks, and social bookmarking are all essential components to make an inbound marketing strategy successful. By participating in social media, you help increase the overall online visibility of your business much more than just having a website. Everything needs to work together for inbound marketing to work.
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