Basics of Social Media Marketing Benefits of Social Media Marketing	Visited: 1444 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Neil Paige September 03, 2009

Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves using online communities like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, blogs etc for marketing & promoting your services. SMM includes set of activities for generating publicity through Social Media websites.

Social Media websites provide tools & platforms to share opinions, experiences & perspectives with each another. It can take many forms including text, images, audios, videos etc.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing:

• Provides you large number of new & repeat visitors
• Helps you to get links
• Helps in syndicating your content
• Makes your website more visible in social media searches
• Helps in creating awareness

Social Media Marketing is recommended for all website owners however you need to make sure:

• You should have regular updated content available on your website in the form of blogs, Articles, Newsletters etc. Static websites which do not get updated regularly are unlikely to be optimized on Social Media.


• You need to make certain changes on your website for making its tagging and bookmarking easier E.g. you can add quick buttons like share on Facebook or add to digg / delicious on your website which makes the tagging easier.


• Share information. Be like a resource area for your industry audience, so users will start sharing your content across Social Media Channels

Social Media Marketing Tools - There are many Social Media Marketing tools available. Some of the famous one’s are:

• Facebook - In past few years, Facebook has transformed from a photo sharing website to a business networking & advertising platform. Facebook provides businesses many ways in which they can market themselves. Following options are available:
  
  • Pages - A company can create a page to promote its business. Facebook page has its own tabs for Wall, Info, Boxes, Notes, photos etc. You can add applications to customize your page and you can change the landing page on which the visitors will land when they come from outside the Facebook.
    
    
  • You can share news, offers, article topics, product updates etc with your fans on Facebook.
    
    
  • Other Facebook users can also become you page fans and they will start receiving your updates.
    
    
  • Discussions - You can join other groups or create your own group and participate in discussion with other members of Facebook.


• LinkedIn - Linkedin is another medium through which businesses can market services to other Linkedin members.
  
  
  • Linkedin has its own profile page which is publicly available and you can control what you want to show on that page.
    
    
  • You can also participate in groups and market your services.
    
    
  • Participate in Q & A i.e. Questions and Answers which helps in branding your profile. Your answers if selected will also be displayed on your profile.


• Digg - Digg is a user-driven content site. Digg has a system where members can vote, bury and comment on stories submitted by other members. More votes will make a story popular and will get you onto Digg's front page which often results in large number of visitors visiting your website.

We at The Web Strategy Company by AfterTheNet keep supplementing our clients with the most basic to the most advanced techniques for any goal they decide to reach with their website. Our step wise approach gives them the complete visibility of their website, which more often than not, they are deprived of, in absence of a trustworthy resource.