MARKETERSEXPRESS.COM – Internet Marketing

You may be asking the question, what is all this talk about social sites and exactly what are social sites?

In Wikipedia.com, social media describes “the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can come in a variety of forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.”

To explain social media in a little more detail, Social media is about people. People connecting and sharing.  Social media is like an endless web –  “X” meets “B” by leaving a comment on their site.  “B” responds and also let’s “M” know about some information on the site of “X” that may be of interest.  “M” goes to the site of “X” and comments on the information.  “M” now gives this information to “C” who links up with “X”.  This is how networks expand, by people connecting and talking with each other.  Sharing ideas and information. “X” started out with no contacts and now he has three.  The more you interact, the bigger your network gets.

The goal is to build communities.  Social media can be used to connect with customers through conversation.  Within a community, you can read, join, and even measure the conversations.

Launching and sustaining an existence on social sites, has evolved into an effective way to promote products and drive traffic to websites.  Social internet media advertising and other Web 2.0 technologies are giving a new approach to internet marketing.

There are many terms for this type of web promotion, including social network marketing and social media marketing.  There are also different types of websites and methods that can be used for social media strategies. Just with traditional ways of internet marketing, succeeding in social network marketing takes a little patience, a little know how, and some hard work.

Social media optimization is one of the primary online marketing strategies you need to know–and it’s getting more important every day. It is a catch-all term for making your pages more visible in social media searches and easier to link to.

It also refers to making your content easier to distribute via other websites, in a way that helps instead of hurts you (i.e. doesn’t violate your copyright, brings in good social media traffic, etc.). Her are some social media optimization basics.

One of the most basic things you can do to improve your standing with social media is to place social media buttons on your web pages. Sites like Digg, Reddit, Sumbleupon and Technorati all have graphic buttons you can insert into your web pages, which make it easy for users of those sites to add you to their favorites list on those sites.

A good blog, if you read it often enough can be every bit as informative as a textbook–and usually a whole lot more fun (not to mention more readable). A good search engine marketing blog is actually better than a textbook, since search engines are changing how they do things all the time. (Google, for example, updates its algorithm once a month).

In a World Wide Web that’s full of blogs, it can be hard to know which ones to spend your time. This is true no matter what your favorite topic. It’s especially true in a field like search engine optimization and marketing, where a lot of misinformation can be found posing as the real thing. Here are 5 reliable blogs you should check out.

Mattcutts.com/blog. Matt isn’t an internet marketer (at least, he doesn’t play one on his blog…), but he is the man in charge of Google’s search department. Therefore, you should read what he writes. Period.

Customer marketing, also known as relationship marketing, is a key strategy in many internet marketers’ plans. It is especially important in Web 2.0 marketing, as Web 2.0 is all about conversation and relationship.

Many IMmers focus heavily on customer marketing. One of the most common phrases you’re likely to hear in the internet marketing community is “the money’s in the list.” Many long-time internet marketers make the majority of their money, selling to people they’ve already sold to. They do this by building a list.

IMmers will normally try to get readers to opt-in both before and after a sale. One of the best ways to do this is to offer something for free–such as an ebook, video course, or downloadable software–as a bonus for signing up to the list. Smart marketers maintain a good customer-centered relationship by occasionally providing other free downloads to their lists. They also keep their customer marketing in good order by providing useful and informative emails.

Hiring an internet marketing consultant can be a daunting task. How do you find your potential online marketing consultants, and how do you separate the good from the bad? Here are some dos, don’ts, and red flags to pay attention to.

Don’t hire someone who guarantees you the top spot on Google’s search engine results page. As attractive as this promise may sound at first, it’s just not something that can be realistically guaranteed. Not only does Google’s search engine algorithm contain many factors unknown to anybody that doesn’t work for Google (and probably to most of its employees, as well), but this algorithm is updated once every month.

Add to this the fact that there are plenty of other people competing for that top spot, and you’ll start to understand why this kind of guarantee is something only used by fly-by-nighters.

Grumble all you want about how “Web 2.0 is just a hyped-up name for what’s already there”. The fact that Web 2.0 marketing is different from the internet marketing of five years ago. Web 2.0 involves lots of conversations and interaction between users, so it’s best to have several social media strategies if you want to earn an income online.

Participate in the multimedia aspect of the internet. People respond to pictures and video more quickly than they respond to written word. You don’t have to be a photographer or a movie producer to take advantage of this.

Take all the photos you have on your website or blog–you should have at least a few (there are plenty of places to get public-use photos for cheap or free). Now, share them! Put them up on Flickr, tag them with appropriate keywords, and link them back to your site.

Using social media sites to create links and drive traffic to websites is one of the top online marketing strategies in today’s “Web 2.0”. Here are a few tips on how to make this work for you.

Create a good profile. A good profile is the foundation of your social media marketing strategy. You’ll need to establish value and trustworthiness to get the most out of social sites, so make sure you pay special attention to your profile.

Go ahead and fill out every field in your profile form. This is in part so that you’ll be a valuable member of your social media site, and not just a marketer promoting a marketing campaign. If you saw that someone’s profile had little more than a description of how they really liked the kinds of things they sold, and little to nothing about who they were or what they had to offer, would you trust it or find it valuable?

With over 80 million users worldwide, Facebook should be leveraged by anyone involved in online marketing. Here are some social marketing tips for utilizing the web’s largest social networking site.
Starting your own Facebook Group is a great way to start social marketing. Groups make it easy to interact with others. They’re also great because of the content you can upload–such as photos and videos–and the content management systems, such as discussion boards and the “comment wall”.

Groups do require a little bit of management. As your group grows bigger, it becomes easy for the group to lose focus. Spam becomes a problem after a certain growth level. This is nothing you can’t overcome, if you’ll just spend a bit of time tending your Facebook Group. Have some sort of screening process for new members, and make sure to post regularly, to keep going with direction and focus.

Digg is probably another must-have for your row of buttons.  Digg is the most-visited, most-used social bookmarking site out there.  Appearing on the site’s front page can get you literally millions of hits–but you don’t have to shoot for the front page to really make some money.

What you want to do is get enough people to add a positive vote to your site, that you get listed in your niche on Digg.  To do this, you need something other than what Sociable supplies (although you should use that one, too.)  A “Digg It” button allows people to quickly add a vote to your site–a vote that can help push you up in Digg’s rankings.