Go Social…Internet is No Longer Only for Geeks!

With the whole world flocking to the social media sites like Twitter, Digg and LinkedIn, making your business visible on them has become extremely challenging. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is your only chance to remain afloat in a swarming pool of competitors. SMO is novel marketing strategy that has rapidly gained popularity in recent times. The concept is simple, get your website refurbished so that it is easily linkable to social media sites, is found on all popular blogs and podcasts and is extensively bookmarked.

Why Social Media?

A marketing study conducted by WhitePaperSource.com reveals that marketers are increasingly drawn towards social media marketing because it yields better results with lower investment. According to the report, the primary benefits of promoting your business through social media are:

• enormous attention from prospects
• increased number of qualified leads
• fruitful business partnerships
• reduced marketing expenses

Who doesn’t want to see their business grow by leaps and bounds in minimum cost? Social media is a fabulous opportunity for doing this and you should just not miss it!

However, only knowing about it and creating accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn will not get you the desired results. Marketing through social media needs extensive planning and effective SMO to ensure that your business is visible wherever your clients may look for it.

How do I make my SMO activities effective?

The answer is simple- proper planning and a well executed SMO strategy. Optimizing your website to ensure that it qualifies all parameters of social media marketing, coupled with effective management and maintenance of the same is what will get you maximum eye balls.

Here are some tips for a perfect SMO that will get you maximum attention on the Internet:

1.    Increase your linkability – Mobilize your website. Update it regularly and imbibe blogs and whitepapers to enhance its linkability.

2.    Make tagging and bookmarking easy – Tag and bookmark your pages with all popular websites.

3.    Help your content travel – SMO goes beyond modifying structure and content of your website. If you have content that is in portable formats like PDF, audio-video files, PPTs etc, the same can be submitted to sites like YouTube, SlideShare, etc..

4.    Make web friends – Go ahead and exchange content and videos with other websites. Experiment with RSS and facilitate others in driving more traffic towards your web content.

Give your website the SMO power and see its presence grow in every corner of the World Wide Web!

Love it or Hate it - Twitter is here to stay!

Some people swear by Twitter whilst other just cannot stand it. Both sides make some compelling statements and astute observations.

The Love:

According to a recent Nielsen survey, Twitter has grown 1328% since February 2008. With over 4 million Twitter users answering the simple question - “What are you doing?” Twitter has been transformed from a simple stay-in-touch-with-your-network website to a network building tool being used by businesses, celebrities, political figures, any everyone else in world. People ant to connect with others, get information, ask questions and get instant answers from a diverse population. The best part is the simplicity of design and application, all you need to do is type your message in 140 characters and you have a voice that can be heard by millions.

The Hate:

Not everyone is such a fan! According to another study by Nielsen, 60% of Twitter users do not return after the first month. What is driving away these new users? Are they not giving this application the chance it deserves? Twitter users have complained of many things - excessive downtime, too simple  design, disinterest in sharing all their minute-to-minute updates with the world, followers and followings, following conversations, etc.

The interesting thing is that Twitter (and others) have listened to these problems and have come up with a plethora of applications and website tweaks to address issue and then some! Whether you love it or hate - that is a personal choice, just like who you wish to follow, what you wish to tweet, what short 2 sentence story you wish to share with the world.

So what do you think of Twitter? Love it or hate it?

Marketing Insider: Social Media & Lead Generation

The latest issue of the Marketing Insider focuses on bringing you some of the latest developments at the intersection of business marketing and social media for effective lead generation. The newsletter provides interesting links to some of the best practices being followed by marketers in the lead generation and social media industries.

Catch the latest buzz, read what the Gurus of the industry are saying, take the poll to see how you match against your peers in terms of your social media expectations of 2009.

Read the latest issue here: Marketing Insider

How to Use Twitter for Marketing

Twitter is a relatively new web 2.0 site that is starting to gain a lot of popularity. That means that a lot of people have heard of it but it is also quite common to run into people who haven’t heard of it.. yet. Twitter.com is this social site that encourages users to post often about what they are currently doing.

A lot of people are using it to improve their marketing reach, by being an active twitterer they gain followers who are interested in what they got going on. This means people being exposed to their updates on a regular basis. For example, if you have hundreds of followers in Twitter and you decide to post an affiliate link, that means that hundreds of people have instantly been exposed to your offer. In this article I will discuss ways to maximize Twitter for your marketing, and also a big mistake to be aware of.

In order to have a fan base per say of followers in Twitter you must be able to keep their interest in you and what you are doing now. “What are you doing?” is the whole foundation of what Twitter is about in the first place. Make sure to post daily if not several times throughout the day updates about what you are doing. The magical thing behind this is that many of your contacts will be able to feel like they know you so much better, will trust you more, and feel much more comfortable about working with you. On the other hand, when you follow others you can learn about them and their possible needs.

The big mistake to watch out for is only posting affiliate links or offers on your Twitter page. This looks like Spam and many people will see you as just abusing Twitter for your own personal gain. Think of it this way, if you would not want to invite your friends or family to keep up with you via Twitter then you are going about it all wrong. As with anything you send out or provide, ninety percent should be content and ten percent (at most) advertising. So this concept is quite simple… constantly post throughout the day what you are doing.. it is usually very simple and only takes a few seconds to post! Secondly, if you write articles or provide content online, provide a link for those in your Twitter posts. You may post many things within one day, but the last thing you post for the day is usually the most important because it will be there the longest. This means that your last post for the day should very well contain a link that you want your followers to see before your start Twittering again the next day!

Another part of Twitter is contributing. As with any social site it should be a give and take relationship. Notice that give comes first… the more you give the more people will want to work with you and the more attention you will receive. Make sure to read and follow other users in Twitter. If you read something interesting or helpful then make sure to reply and say so, or even put a link for it on your Twitter so that you are directing others to more quality content. This can also be as simple as connecting with other users, if they know you are reading their Twitter page they will be much more likely to check out what you have going on too.

To get started in Twitter you should first invite contacts who aren’t using Twitter and also find contacts who are already using Twitter so that you can start following them and also start getting people to follow you. Twitter has a nice invite and find feature that makes this incredibly easy. To grow your reach even more you can start following people who follow or are followed by the people who follow you.. or that you follow. You might need to read that sentence again.. but basically you can find other users to connect with that are already connected to other users.

Now for a big tip. If you really want to maximize the potential with Twitter, you should make sure to take advantage of any plug-ins or sites that support Twitter. Here are three, but I’m sure there will be many more in the future if not already. Squidoo allows you to input your Twitter account info into your Squidoo account and then it can automatically post updates to your Twitter account when you create or update Squidoo lenses. Facebook has an application called Twitter, it automatically updates your Facebook status when you make a Twitter post. The other tool is a free WordPress plug-in called TweetMyBlog that allows you to create a two-way connection from your blogs to Twitter. TweetMyBlog allows you to use a widget on your Wordpress blogs that will display your current Twitter feed.. that way all visitors to your blog can look at the widget and see a running feed of your latest Twitter posts. If they click on that they will be brought to your Twitter page. In addition, when you make a new post to your blog, TweetMyBlog will automatically make a post to your Twitter page with a link to your latest blog post. Imagine the extra exposure you can receive by using these tools that help people see more of what you are doing.

Lastly, have fun! Twitter is a social site… so interact and enjoy!

Author: Darren Olander

About the Author:
Darren Olander is dedicated to teaching others how to create a success online through internet network marketing strategies. He is a site owner, article writer, coach & marketing consultant enjoying the benefits of working full time from home.