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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 Optimization
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.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
involves using a number of social networking platforms to brand a
product or service. Search Engine Optimization or SEO techniques of
communication, to the end consumer.
We’ve been testing social media
marketing strategies in this space since its inception, starting with
forum posting, back around the year 2000. Now we ghostwrite blogs for
clients, shoot video shorts, manage podcasts and conduct creative viral
email campaigns.
Social Media Marketing 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. The goal here is to create pages
that provide links back to your website, for inbound traffic and links.
We want these pages to rank well in the search engines under your key
words and phrases, and at the same time build traffic on the social
media sites to attract attention.
MarCom offers many ways to
market to your target audiences in the places that they hang out.
Here’s how:
Traditional and Edgy Social
Media Marketing
Traditional is for older
demographic target audiences, edgy is for younger, hipper demographic
target audiences. Not mutually exclusive. Keyword emphasis can shift
from month to month.
Traditional
Article publishing, electronic
press releases, blogs, directories, text linking.
Edgy
MySpace, Facebook, Digg,
Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Flicker, and more.
 Ghostwriting
and managing blogs.
Forum
posting in niche communities.
Video
shorts for You Tube, and more.
Content
writing
Articles
Electronic
press releases
White
papers, and more
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