July 9, 2008

How to participate in social media marketing?

Social media has taken the entire marketing world by surprise but truly what
is social media? According to me social media is sharing information and interacting online. User groups are classified as communities. Communities of users connect and converse with each other online using tools such as networking sites (facebook, twitter, etc.), file sharing sites (youtube, etc.), blogs,
widgets, wikis, podcast, forums, etc. Users can generate content in any form like text, pictures, music or video. Communities converse about anything that is important to them including your product and services.

Why is social media important to marketers?
Social media marketing build inbound traffic via links, it makes your website popular and popularity improves your search ranking. Marketers can also listen in to community conversations about their products and services.
Conversations about popularity of product or service, changing consumer
behavior, consumer experience, and other aspect relevant to your product and services can be heard in real time. Participating in social media is key not only to factors above but significant mode for lead generation.

How can companies use social media?
1. Participation at all levels is key: There are generally 3 levels of
participation
a. Listen in to the conversation: Start subscribing and receiving daily
online updates of conversations that are key to your product or service.
b. Comment on conversations that are important to you. This will enable
you to get into those conversations.
c. Launch your own Blog, Podcast, etc. as well as engage with
communities on networking sites.

2. Content is King:
a. Good content is essential to building interest in the online
community.
b. Commitment to consistent good content, daily or bi-weekly is
critical.

3. Promote, Promote & Promote:
a. Promote your content online by ending content with a call to action
like asking readers to provide feedback/comments, adding links to various
sites like digg.com, delicious, etc., engaging in active dialogs with
industry thought leaders, etc.
b. Integrate your content with your online (web, email and mobile)
marketing campaigns

4. Measure:
a. Use a combination of website analytics (for e.g. Google Analytics)
with your direct marketing campaign metrics.
b. Use tools like Technorati, etc. to measure how many times you have
been mentioned online.

Looking forward for your comments.

Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz