Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard a lot of affiliate marketers talking about Social Media Marketing. Social media has become a cornerstone for successfully promoting a product, services, websites, blogs and anything else you can think of. While the concept might seem straighforward, many novice marketers completely miss the boat on this powerful asset. In some cases an adverse social media effect might end up causing more harm to their online reputation than good.
Before You Begin - The Social Media Strategy
Prior to launching any type of campaign, whether it be an advertising campaign, a backlink building campaign or a social media campaign, you must be pragmatic in implementing a well researched strategy. If you don’t have a strategy, you will eventually hit a brick wall and be forced to start all over again. Wasted efforts - “while sometimes good for the learning process, are an occupational hazard for professional business that can easily be avoided with careful research and design beforehand.”
The first step is to have a clear definition of exactly what you will be trying to get out of your campaign. Are you trying to network with other like- minded individuals or are you looking for more traffic to your website? Are you simply looking for backlinks to increase your site’s SEO value? Ask yourself what are you doing this for and with that in mind you can begin to search for social media sites that are appropriate for your social media marketing campaign.
The second step is to analyze which social media sites you will be targeting. Don’t even signup an account during this stage. Simply spend a few minutes or hours analyzing if the site in question is worth your time and effort. for example, if you are looking for backlinks and SEO value, you will obviously want to find social media sites that aren’t using the nofollow tag. Each site you find that seems as if it might be beneficial to your social media optimization, copy the url down in a notepad use in the next phase. Again, resist the urge to join sites as you find them because you’re not ready for full optimization just yet.
Creating an Identity - Social Media Public Relations
In social media marketing, the two strongest assets you posess are your identity and your good reputation. I’ll discuss the reputation part further down in this article, but for this phase of development, we’ll focus on identity.
Unless you’re intending to be a shameless self promoter or social media spammer, establishing an contigious identity is crucial. If you will be using your identity across the various sites or networks you discovered in the first phase, this means you will have to decide on a username that you can work into a social identity. The identity is essential because it will establish your personal brand recognition.
If you are a blogger named Johnny Thunders who has a blog about old school punk rock bands, you may want to pick a username such as “JThunders” or “OldSchoolPunk”. One huge mistake I see people making, especially on Twitter, is creating a username like “CellphoneSales”. Use your head here. Nobody is going to add “CellphoneSales” to their friends list or follow a name like that on Twitter or any other social media site.
You will also need to find a creative avatar to represent you. If you don’t want to use your own personal picture as your avatar, you should use soemthing creative that is relative to your goals. I’ve found that using your own personal picture and using it across networks is yet another form of brand recognition that online envrionments thrive on. Once again, establish a personal identity that others can relate to.
Up and Running - Social Media Ethics
Once you have a strategy, sites to join and identity thought out, you’re ready to begin signing up for the various sites and services you targeted. It is important that you ease yourself into a new community and not come on too strong. Also, make sure you are aware of that rules. Don’t just go rushing in and spamming your links everywhere unless you want to ruin your reputation or worse, get banned.
If a site you are working with has groups, introduce yourself into groups that are of interest to you and groups where you may be of interest to others. Don’t just join groups and add friends blindly to increase your stats. Most social media sites frown on this type of behaviour. Remember that slow and steady wins the race. The worst thing you can do is get banned for unethical or irresponsible behaviour because you will lose all the work you have done up to that point.
As the operator of several forums and social networking sites myself, the one thing I have noticed is that so many amateurs get banned quickly from every site they join. The internet isn’t so anonymous and many social site members will remember the link to a blog or site owned or promoted by a jerk who got banned for spamming. I get more abuse reports concering returning, previously banned members than anything. So, with that said, never spam social media sites because it will not only waste your time, but it will waste the time of the site administrators.
Conclusion
Social Media Marketing can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Always remember that with any “social” medium, there is an implication of community and how you behave in a community can help you build a strong reputation or can give you a bad reputation. Follow each communities rules and be a productive, contributing member and the rewards can be limitless.
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great. thanks for the help
Excellent article. I am already doing what you have preached in so far as using my own picture and my name across the social networks I join. I think people value the honesty.
Social Media Optimization for Social Media Marketing…
Social media has become a cornerstone for successfully promoting a product, services, websites, blogs and anything else you can think of. While the concept might seem straighforward, many novice marketers completely miss the boat on this powerful asset…
Very nice post. you managed to describe social marketing with good opt points. the most important thing about social marketing from my point of view is the ability to know when it’s made too aggressive, which could make more damage than good.
Great article. So true when you said social media can either build a strong reputation or can give you a bad reputation so it is very important to use them the right way.
The old method of advertising is interactive marketing. The term is misleading. Most people think it means that there is some type of interaction on the part of the person advertised to, and there is. But, it is not conversational. Instead, the advertiser wants you to interact with their campaign in a specific set of steps. Following the call to action and visiting a website for instance. It’s the push to make you do something. Live this image. Buy this now.
Social Media Marketing is just the opposite. It’s the pull of the tribe. The tribe already has your trust so the actions they take are ones you align with. On a larger scale, it’s the allure of belonging in the group as you take action together. “I am doing this so why don’t you do it with me?” On an individual level, the attraction is to behave the same way to get the same results that benefits your fellow tribeswoman or tribesman. “She looks hot! I want to look hot too. I want to go to her hairstylist” and you do. Social Media Marketing uses the power of attraction.
While advertising tries to use the same tactic, with a billboard for instance, of a gorgeous woman telling you the benefits of the salon, it doesn’t have the same impact because it’s pushing you to go. It is not pulling you in as a trusted friend. Your friends have your best interests at heart and advertisers do not. Social Media Marketing is based on building trust and that foundation will make Social Media a dominant player in Marketing.
To be very true, It is very easy to use all those social media sites but it is difficult to get our desired results. More often we get our accounts banned or got our sites banned from search engines. I like your tips because they are basic and should be followed.
Hey Dave,
I understand the logic behind planning a social media networking campaign rather and controlling your net image. I agree with your point that social media networks should be leveraged for more than SEO benefits. Thanks for the article!
-Locke
I wish I’d read this article a year ago before I started out in social media. My identity is a mess of differnet usernames and I see the mistake I made in not choosing a concrete identity to use on all of them.