I just read an interesting comment in one of my online marketing newsletters. Today what is your ROI, or Return on Ignoring? Ignoring social media marketing, or the proper optimization of your website... If your company's key marketing staff are not participating today in online social media marketing outlets like Facebook, Linked In, or Twitter, they are costing you money.

What's more, online marketing can help provide rankings in the search engines so your company name and key words associated with your products and services will come up within the first page of the search engines.

Many companies still do not realize the importance of synergy with their online and offline marketing strategies and tactics. For example, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works better when it is carried out throughout all the marketing and PR disciplines.

Social Media Optimization includes offsite optimization strategies for distributing content across multiple social media networks - like Facebook or MySpace, or adding links to services such as Digg, Del.icio.us or Readdit. This includes writing unique content embedded with your key words and phrases, so when people search online, there’s a better chance of finding your content via the search engines.

The current economic slowdown has prompted many marketers to try to reach new customers more cost-effectively, according to a December 11 Wall Street Journal article by Loretta Chao. This in turn, could be a reason for online advertising budgets to grow in 2009.

One example is in China: the slowdown is giving a boost to a market that has grown rapidly but remains skinny compared with the U.S. online advertising market.

People are rethinking marketing spending in the new year. More and more companies are looking for better rankings on the first pages of the search engines like Google, so that people will notice their website, and in turn take a look at their products and services. It is one reason why search engine optimization (SEO) has increased dramatically, and even if the overall advertising market suffers losses during the downturn, the one piece of the mix that will get a bigger piece of the total is Internet marketing and advertising.

The December 10 issue of the Wall Street Journal reported that advertisers in 2008 spent about $1.2 billion on U.S. Social media marketing and advertising. On My Space, Facebook, and other social networking sites. But what is interesting is the traffic: U.S. Visitors for October at My Space is about 6% higher than a year ago, while Facebook is at 40% more, and Bebo is 34% greater than a year ago.(Source: eMarketer for spending, and comScore for visitors.)

Generally speaking ad spending on social media networks is still relatively small, but growing, while we all know newspaper and magazine ad revenues are down. Just note how skinny they are these days. Why? Because everyone is online. Reading the news, watching movies, and shopping.

Speaking of which, if your website is not properly optimized, you won't get visitors to the site. Search engine optimization is critical for websites to be ranked by Google. This is how people find your website, or not. And done right, it's about the only way you can improve the volume and quality of traffic to your website.

Did you know that when you post photos in a blog, your search engine optimization (SEO) can benefit by using your key words or phrases in the way you tag or name the photo? An example might be our current post. I intend to add a photo. In this case it is one of our Creative Director, Brad Stone's advertising images for Guess.

The blogging software we use, b2evolution, asks for a name for the alternate image tag. I used Los Angeles SEO firm, one of our key phrases. Note I have also linked that same word back to one of the pages on our website that pertains to the same. That's it!

We get many calls from people asking if we do viral advertising, or online advertising. People often think of this as a separate entity ... separate from traditional advertising. The truth is it is all one and the same. And it is about lead generation. That is truly what MarCom New Media is in the business to do. We help get leads that hopefully turn into new customers and revenues. That is what marketing and advertising has always been all about. Right?

The new media is online. We must use technology such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make your website show up on the first pages of the engines like Google when people search using key words or phrases for what they want. So how do we do this? We do it via onsite optimization on your website, and offsite via links BACK to your website. This isn't all that different from direct marketing. The direct mail piece was targeted to you, and if you called the company who mailed it, that was a lead generated. And if you purchased something, the company's direct mail campaign paid off.

But today's customer is much more sophisticated and demanding than the consumer of yesteryear. We all like to go online and chat about things. And in order to find you online, we now use what is called Social Media Marketing where we target and interact with other people, share ideas, opinions, ratings, etc. When was the last time you purchased a computer and didn't search online to find a site like CNET or PC Magazine, who "rated" the latest equipment, and told you what you are getting yourself into? In effect this is very much like the old fashioned Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that we use to share ideas, opinions insights, experiences and perspectives with others. There are online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, while social media technology includes an assorted array of online communications hubs driven by users: Internet forums, message boards, blogs, podcasts, wikis, and videos. There’s also picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, and music-sharing. MarCom has been part of these new online marketing trends since the beginning.

Social networks were only beginning to gain traction in the spring of 2007; now memberships are in the hundreds of millions. People are having interactive conversations online in social media websites like MySpace, and Facebook. There are also social networking and video sharing places like You Tube and Google video, virtual reality sites such as Second Life, Last.fm and iTunes for personal music, Flickr to share your photos and micro blogs like Twitter or Pownce. Social Media is growing exponentially.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) includes offsite optimization strategies with the intent of distributed content across multiple social media networks. Tools for this include adding links to services such as Digg, Del.icio.us or Readdit. This includes writing unique content embedded with your key words and phrases, so when people search online, there’s a better chance of finding your content via the search engines.

There are many social networking platforms that we can use to brand your product or service. We’ve been testing social media marketing strategies in this space for many years, and it all started with forum posting, back around 2000. Now we ghostwrite blogs for clients, shoot video shorts, manage podcasts and conduct creative viral email campaigns.

SMM is about being social so this offsite work includes research, and a social media strategy with specific tactics for getting involved and having two way conversations with target audiences. We want to create pages that provide links back to your website, for inbound traffic and links. We also want these pages to rank well in the search engines under your key words and phrases. This ultimately will build traffic.

MarCom offers many ways to market to your target audiences in the places that they hang out. The reality is, we are a Los Angeles marketing firm that specializes in online advertising techniques.