10e20 Blog

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Optimization (SMO) is an important - perhaps even critical - Internet marketing strategy. Time and time again marketers are unsure of how to approach marketing in the social networks or even if they should at all. Almost daily I’m asked by Marketing Managers and CMOs about how to get into the networks and what the benefits are. I’m amazed that they are not sure if they should do this. At some point, one must seriously investigate and take the plunge. The benefits of marketing in this arena are far too numerous to sit on the sidelines. So today I just wanted to go through a few of the up front benefits we see all the time.

The approach and exact methods used in a campaign vary drastically based on your business size, vertical and whether B2B or B2C. However, two aspects remaining constant across any campaign are the goals of garnering relevant inbound hyperlinks to your target site as well as driving new and increased impressions on a brand. Let’s explore some of these and other important benefits of embracing Social Media Marketing campaigns:

Traffic from the Social Network – Traffic is great for major websites where the business model is based on site session numbers, pageviews advertising impressions and CPC models. Major media websites can benefit greatly from social media as leveraging social news sites can deliver thousands upon thousands of relatively targeted users to a site. Traffic can come directly from very targeted points of the social network for bursts and/or for long periods of time depending on the approach.

Brand Impressions – Impressions are a result of traffic and more unique sessions on a website. Various forms of social media can drive consistent brand impressions and exposure through very targeted communities. There are ways to achieve impressions quickly and also to draw impressions out over the long term for very effective brand awareness campaigns. Why not get your brand in front of more people on the Internet?

Viral Word of Mouth – If you develop “killer content” it’s likely that your content, once promoted (”promoted“ being the key word) and found, will move virally through the initial Social Networks, and further on by email, instant messaging and word of mouth to other Internet users. This is tremendously powerful to have content go viral, as users don’t feel that the information is being pushed at them, but more, it was referred to them by a trusted friend in a trusted network.

Links – Links are critical to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As such, some social media campaigns should be viewed as part of an SEO strategy. Google and other search engines weigh the value of each link and the overall composition of those links as they relate to your website. The more links pointing back to your site, the better. The more targeted the anchor text, the better. The great part about leveraging social media is that these links appear completely natural to the search engines. They are not purchased or paid links but are naturally developed by users discovering and seeing your valuable content and then linking back to it.

Traffic from the Links - As a result of the links formed from your content going viral, a successful campaign will often continue to deliver targeted traffic from the links acquired. This traffic is pretty much set in stone for as long as the link remains live. Oftentimes the links are built in targeted industry sites and blogs and end up being archived and remaining live on the web indefinitely. Ongoing, direct referral traffic, from targeted sites??? Who wouldn’t want that?!

Tagging and Bookmarking - Good content, when properly distributed in targeted social networks will in many cases be tagged by users who have accounts in those networks. Tags end up being revisited by friends of those users who originally tagged the content, but also will show up in social network site searches. The more users tagging your content the better over the long term. Interestingly enough, some social networks tagging information on user profiles shows up in major search engines searches (due to the tremendous link & trust authority that many of these sites have).

Community Popularity – Building community around your brand by leveraging the various social media websites and employing the tools and API’s offered is important. If you are able set up, participate and add value for other members in a community, you’ve engaged in true social media work. This takes dedication to participate in a meaningful and creative way, however the return on attraction to your brand is unparalleled.

Reputation Management - Social Networks have become a powerful tool for reputation management which is a crucial point in brand marketing. Being first to control a targeted URL or Pofile set-up on a major social network can be of endless benefit to your brand over the long term. With this action, marketers have better reach and control over brand dialogue.

With all of the above, it’s endlessly important to find as many ways as possible to track the success of your social media campaign. Tracking the success of your campaign comes in many forms and depends on your goals. Many marketers track sales.  And while there are no guarantees of new sales for a particular campaign, we often see bottom line boosts resulting from overall social campaigns. If your campaign is run “off site” you may track metrics such as the number of “views” of a video content on a video social network - thus indicating brand impressions. If your campaign is run with “on site” content, looking at the number and quality of inbound or back-links built to your website is another metric to track. In any case, before you promote your content and engage in Social Media Networks, be sure to set a goal and define which metrics you are going to track your campaign with. A couple of rules of thumb here are to have good site analytics and reporting access during and after promotion and make sure that your hosting is up to par.

Social Media Marketing has too many benefits to list in a brief article. As with any form of internet marketing, your campaign needs to be really well thought out, and you must spend a fair amount of time on planning strategy and creating exceptional content, then promoting and monitoring the tracking metrics closely. As social content comes in many forms from articles to video to images to podcasts whatever form you choose, make sure it’s on target for your audience and that is is simply awesome. Then, set about to finding your best distribution and promotion strategy.

Embracing Social Media helps extend brand reach by getting in touch with the most influential first movers on the web. Take your time and consider your campaign set-up carefully, but be sure to get out and participate in this Internet Marketing strategy. Some say it’s a new frontier and they want to hang back, but there are well-established methods to ensure positive marketing successes. Don’t hang back too long!

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