A Web Design & Marketing Blog

Are you using Social Media effectively?
Posted in Social Networking, Zing Blog on December 9th, 2009 by Rusty

Tags: effective social media, social media effectiveness, social media strategy

As if this hasn’t already been talked about by hundreds of people… Social Media is a successful way to market your business. In this post I will discuss several ways to effectively use social media to make it successful for your business.

Being in the web design industry almost every client in our network is now using Twitter. We use it too, for expanding our blogging efforts and gaining more exposure to our products, services, and outstanding eye for design. But are we using Twitter effectively? How about Facebook, Digg, PR Newswire, or any of the thousands of social sites? We are just reaching around 1400 followers from Twitter, 300 from Facebook and some from social bookmarking sites like Digg which really isn’t that impressive.

So wanting to learn more and find out how effective we are, I did some research and found some interesting results/questions.

1. Your a Marketer, Not a User
Marketers can certainly have success with social media, but the key is to be an active user who contributes to the community of the site. Be a user first and a marketer second. If other users feel that you are only there to market, they will not be as receptive to your submissions, votes, or suggestions. This is why companies usually have a social media person on staff to handle this.

2. Am I Creating Content Specifically for Social Media Audiences?
Effective social media marketing involves creating content that will pique the interest of social media users. Once you are familiar with the community at your targeted social media sites, take some time to brainstorm article ideas that may appeal to them. Hence this is why I follow industry users and not just anyone.

3. Are My Followers Social Media Users?
Many sites and blogs, especially those with large audiences, benefit from having readers who are social media users. This makes it more likely that your content will be submitted without you initiating it, and it will make it easier to get votes. If your blog has a low number of social media users you may want to consider introducing them to specific social media sites in your posts.

4. You’re Posting Commercial Content
Social media users do not like to feel like they are being marketed too, and many social media sites even prohibit commercial content. If you are trying to promote your company with social media you will need to do it passively in order to have any success. The best approach is to use social media to build links and exposure to your site, and leave the marketing to other times and situations.

5. You Need To Build a Network
This is a very important point when using social media as a whole. The most successful social media marketers are very well connected. Having a network of friends and fellow social media users allows you to help each other with votes and submissions when needed. Many social media marketers share voting requests with their friends via email or IM, and sometimes even via Twitter.

6. You’re Only Focusing On One Method
Another common mistake is only focusing on the major social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, or Digg. While the major sites are the ones that will send the most traffic, they also have far more users who are competing with you and have more spam/hacked user accounts. If you focus on smaller sites or niche social media sites you may be able to get a “popular” submission with only a few votes. This traffic is much easier to come by and at least you will have something to show for your efforts. A very small percentage of Digg users will ever get results with their submissions. Why? because your a needle in a haystack. Same with StumbleUpon.

7. Your Not Engaging Your Followers
I’m sure you’ve seen voting buttons and widgets on blogs, like buttons, share this, and more. They are there for a reason. Use them and people will do the same for your content the objective with social media is to be social and engage your potential clients just as if you are going to a networking meeting. Plus the more content you share and contribute the more people will engage you and become positive social media followers.

8. Promote Your Social Media Accounts
One important thing with social media is sharing. Promote the fact you have a Facebook or Twitter account and make it easy to become a friend or fan you will be surprised who is already a fan or your work or product and doesn’t mind keeping up to date. The easiest way for you to share your website is with Share This widget. Which makes it easy to share your website or individual pages amongst the internet social sites.

9. Know The Tools
Social sites such as Twitter have tools which you can use to track and manage yours and others tweet activity through their website. Make sure you know what these tools do. Here are a couple social media cheat sheets:
Twitter Cheat Sheet
Facebook Getting Started Guide
Digg Cheat Sheet

10. You’re Only Submitting/Voting for Your Own Content
Don’t be selfish. Social Media needs to have involvement of others and your own content. Read other peoples articles, comment on other blogs, and share other content besides your own. You will not only gain followers but backlinks to your website it’s a win/win.

So What’s Your Experience?
Do you have another important tip to help manage social media effectively? share it with us.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Social Networking, Zing Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.