Social Media is any online platform where people can connect, communicate, develop a relationship with each other and ultimatley do business togeather. Over the last few years social networking sites have become more and more main stream and people are beginning to discover how useful they can be for a new kind of marketing.
It’s called relationship marketing and it works very much like the word of mouth marketing of years gone by. Recent studies show that people believe less than 25% of the marketing messages they receive but conversely they do believe over 75% of what they are told by their peers.
Do you remember how people used to gather together on their front porch on Sunday afternoons to talk? Or how women went once a week to the hairdresser and used to sit and visit while they were waiting for their hair to dry. The Social Media sites have become the front porches and beauty parlors of of the Internet.
They are the perfect places to market your products and services using relationship marketing? If you would like to give the Social Media Marketing a try here are the 7 most important ingredients for a successful Social Media Marketing Plan.
Ingredient #1 Your Blog – Your self-hosted WordPress Blog should be at the center of any Social Media Marketing Plan. It’s very important that it be self hosted so you have control over the content. The social networking world is driven by content so your blog needs to be on a site where you have total control over what your prospects see. Free blogs are fine for family information sites but they are not suitable for any site you wish to use for business. The people who host those sites are in control.
They can add advertisements or even take your site down at any time.
Ingredient #2 Your Email List and Autoresponder Service – One of the most important pieces of a Social Media Marketing plan is the ability to grow a list of qualified people. You do this by having an Opt-in box somewhere near the top of your Blog. You also need a freebie (a gift of something of high perceived value) that you give away to visitors when they give you their email address. You can use this email list to send newsletters, special announcements and marketing messages whenever you have something valuable to say.
Ingredient #3 Your Twitter account – Twitter is the micro-blogging platform that is taking the world by the storm right now. Get a Twitter account in your own name if possible. If your name is taken, then add a middle initial or underscore between your first and last name. When you sign up, make sure to include a good picture, preferably a headshot, with a light colored background. Your short profile should include your most important keywords.
Ingredient #4 Your Facebook Fan Page-Fan pages are the business side of Facebook and they are separate from your profile page. They are valuable for SEO because they are indexed by Google. Unlike on your profile, you can send marketing messages to your fans at anytime. You can also have as many different Fan Pages as you would like in your name or in the name of your business.
Ingredient #4 Your LinkedIn account -LinkedIn is the most formal of all the social networking sites and they are a must for anyone who is in the professional world. Make sure you completely build out all the different categories including your education and previous work history. LinkedIn is the first place a prospective employer or joint venture partner will go to find out about you, so an incomplete profile tells them you don’t follow through.
Ingredient #5 Your YouTube account – YouTube is owned by Google so videos have a gigantic impact on the page rank for your name or your business. Short and sweet is better than longer videos with studies showing that people click away after about 1.5 minutes. Make sure to include your keywords in your title and description and add your URL to the description as well.
Ingredient #7 Your Google profile – Google allows you to maintain a public profile which should include links to all your other social network sites, and a good description of who you are and what you do. Try to keep this as up to date as possible. Since you won’t spend any time there updating your status, I have put it on my calendar to check and make sure all the info is correct at least once a quarter.
Do you have a product or service you would like to bring to the Internet but don’t know quite where to begin. How would you like the opportunity to have your WordPress Blog created and optimized by a blog expert? Then how would you like a Social Media Marketing specialist to create and optimize all these important sites just for you? If that sounds good to you I would like to invite you to come to http://twitwall.com/view/index.cfm?who=laurenamcmullen and enter to win The Total Social Media Marketing Package worth over 00.00. But you better hurry as the contest ends at midnight 9/21/2009 Again go to to win is http://twitwall.com/view/index.cfm?who=laurenamcmullen to enter.