Like most elements of serious business, there's a skill in using social media marketing as a realistic tool. Many companies lose the opportunity to influence and gain fantastic PR value, because they don't really understand the power at their fingertips.
It's not that complex to understand: promote your content with the social media concept exactly as you would with any of your services: by letting people know and talk about it.
- Arrive with a gift, not an ego boost
Be friendly, informal, occasionally amusing and don't ‘sell' - far too unsocial to be appealing. Established and prominent bloggers are great socialites and social influencers; they want to grow relationships, not make isolated contact. Make it easy for them by offering a free tip, discount, advice on a problem.
2. Link and link again
It's actually what happens away from the page that wins you social media business. To generate action from your social network, it is imperative you attract favourable links from search engine approved sources. Be careful here because you don't want to sound like a hungry dog, begging for a link. If you have good quality links to your pages with engaging content, people will want to interact with you.
•3. Internet marketing
Social media, SEO and internet marketing are inextricably linked: if you go for one, then be prepared to go for all three. The way to get success is to ensure these networking resources are fully interactive with your page content. Why not search out some favourable blog and article sites, join in the chat with other users, agree, comment, disagree? This is a tremendous way to get links back to your site and get involved in the buzz.
•4. Competition is a good thing
To compete with others and be involved in the social media crowd you must impress visitors and friends: your content must be temptingly tasty and hard to resist. Avoid adding dollops of keywords and phrases, even if they are relevant to your product: internet users are street wise and search engines will not reward you with lots of visitors; they are more likely to regard you as suspicious and give you a wide berth.
•5. Content is royal
Write people friendly content to:
- ü catch attention
- ü inform of benefits
- ü persuade to respond
- ü convince to link
Now enter mainstream social media marketing: watch your doors open...to billions of everyday people, having everyday conversations with each other. With compelling content, it's a superb way to attract links. It gets people talking about your product to others so your credibility, trust and expert authority help the pages which you want to rank high for certain keywords.
•6. Networking the social media way
Call it content distribution networking; it happens on sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. The more people share your content: leaving reviews, tweeting, commenting, blogging, linking, bookmarking your site and telling their network about you, the more you gain. So what happens if someone leaves a bad review? Well, who hasn't messed up occasionally? Use a negative comment positively, correcting the damage in a nice manner. You are human, people will admire your honesty and how well you responded.
To conclude: The arrival of social media platforms and blogging has dramatically changed the landscape on how we interact with each other, whether with friends or strangers. Billions of people can now make their voice heard: give advice, an opinion, a comment, recommend or condemn a product or service, inform and influence millions of others. The careful combination of social media activity, internet marketing and SEO copywriting fires this with a rocket powered boost.
For more information contact Sandy Eifion-Jones Director, SEJ PR & Editing Services
sandy@sejwritingservices.co.uk [1]
www.sejwritingservices.co.uk [2]