Social Media Marketing : Internet Marketing Strategies Part III

It's a social media hype all around the world and it certainly is the right time to take advantage of that hype by getting into social media marketing. First, you need to know that there are several types of social media like social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, blogs, forums, are also social media tools. For simplicity sake, we will tone down to the one which is currently most popular - social networking.

There are several social networking sites. Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Multiply, and MySpace just to name a few. However, the most successful of all the social networking sites to date are facebook and twitter and that's what we're going to talk about.

Everybody's jumped into the bandwagon, there's no reason why your business shouldn't be joining too! It doesn't matter if you're a self employed, small business or large business owner. Facebook and twitter would fit your business just fine.

Social Media Marketing with Facebook

I'm a facebook user and like facebook because of its flexibility to install applications and their "fan pages" feature. Almost anyone can just make a facebook account or facebook fan page. A facebook fan page is categorized in many ways such as if it's about a public figure or local business. That rings a bell. You can use facebook fan pages for your business!

Facebook Marketing Tips

If you're a well-known company already, you may not need much publicity because people will search for you. If you're not that well known yet and you got a facebook page, start inviting your friends into your fan page and ask them to spread the word. It's important that you get as many members as you can as possible because that will allow you to rebrand your facebook page's URL to something like http://www.facebook.com/everypesocounts.

Be sure to communicate regularly with your facebook fans as this is about "socializing". In my facebook fan page, I try to ask questions. Well... It can get a little disappointing when nobody responds, but that's ok. It's still a good attention grabber. I'm sure if I was able to do that more regularly then I'd see more effective results.

I also tried to make a good landing page for new visitors of my fan page. I try to put a reference to my blog here (www.everypesocounts) and an e-mail opt-in link to almost everywhere I can put them in. It's important to help people know what the page is all about. Also, try to put a nice photo on your facebook page's profile. To create a facebook fan page, start here.

If you already have a company website or blog, it might be useful to use some of facebook's "like" and "recommend" widgets. You can check them out here.

Social Media Marketing with Twitter

I don't tweet much but a lot of people use twitter to follow news about a particular person or business. This is useful if you want to build up hype. For example, you might be launching a product in 8 hours and you might want to update your customers on the preparations you make.

Twitter Marketing Tips

The first thing I did when I joined twitter was "brand" my twitter page. Or channel. Whatever they call that @everypesocounts thing. I tried to put in my banner here at this blog so people can easily recognize what I'm all about. I automate my wall posts on facebook and twitter through some configuration in facebook. I'm sorry but I can't remember how. You can also do the reverse and make your tweets appear on your facebook wall. So basically, I do the same type of thing... Asking questions, re-posting my blog posts which in your situation can be news about your business like announcing new products or services, discounts, promos, etc.

You can start inviting your friends or follow a few people first. Some people would follow back automatically. Be careful about following spam accounts though as you'll get your messages folder flooded with spam messages

You can read about my recent article about email marketing or read about the my introduction to internet marketing strategies. Until then, please come back for the next install of this series about blog marketing.