Social Media: Straight Forward Explanation

With so much information about social media, trying to understand it all can be overwhelming.

The goal of this article is to simplify social media marketing and show you how all the different elements in the social media world interact to help you get traffic for your website, exposure for your brand, and sales for your company.

1. Content
When trying to decide what kind of content you should make, my advice is simple:

1. Use common sense to determine which types of content just won't work for your business model.

2. Try everything else.

3. Measure the results.

4. Keep doing what works and get rid of what doesn't.

These are the most common types of content you can create:

• Articles
• Videos
• Podcasts (video or audio podcasts)
• Reports/white papers
• Expert interviews (in text format, audio format or video format)
• Resources (these are links to other people's content, such as tools, articles, etc.)
• Events (calls, webinars, contests, seminars, giveaways, charity events, etc.)

2. Your Blog
Your blog is at the center of your social media marketing campaign. This is where you'll be driving people to.

3. Content Distribution Channels

Other than your blog, you'll be posting your content to number of content distribution channels. These are the most common:

• Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Groups (Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Google groups and Yahoo! groups)
• Forums (i.e. message boards or discussion boards)
• Social bookmarking sites (Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Mixx, etc.)
• Video sharing sites (YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, Yahoo! Video, etc.)
• Article directories (such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, etc.)
• Other people's audiences (Doing things like guest blogging, asking people with large email lists to broadcast your offer to their lists, asking another blogger to write about your product, etc.)
• Podcast sites (like iTunes, PodcastAlley, etc.)
• Email lists (blog subscribers, people that downloaded your free report, current customers, list of potential clients etc.)
• Blogs (you can't post your articles on someone else's blog without their permission, but you can use comment marketing to your advantage.)

There are two things you need to keep in mind:

1. You don't have to use all the content distribution channels mentioned above. Just as with content types, don't use the channels that obviously won't work with your campaign (i.e. a video sharing sites if you don't do videos), try everything else and get rid of what doesn't work.

2. Not all your content will go to all your content distribution channels. For example, you might want to promote your white paper on your blog but not on Facebook, and you might want to promote your next webinar using only Facebook Events.

My advice: Create a 2-column spreadsheet. In the left column put a list of your content pieces. In the right column put your content distribution channels. Then, for every piece of content, decide what channels you'll use to promote it.

4. Calls to Action
Pay attention because it's one of the most important parts of social media. There are two things you want to do right:

· Get the people who find your content in the distribution channels to then visit your blog.

· Get your blog visitors to follow you through as many content distribution channels as possible.

Here's how to make it happen:

How to Get People that Find Your Content to Visit Your Blog
The short answer is, "with a call to action". This call to action should be related to the piece of content they stumbled upon. For example, in your football bloopers video you want your call to action to be something along the lines of "Visit my website for more football bloopers videos!"

How to Get Your Blog Visitors to Check Out Your Other Content Distribution Channels
The more connections someone has to you, the higher your chances are that they'll see your content. Someone who follows you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube and subscribes to your blog's RSS feed is a lot more likely to see your content than someone who only follows you on Twitter. Different people prefer to follow others in different ways, so give them some options and let them choose.

On my blog I invite people to subscribe by email, RSS, follow me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

5. Public Relations
In addition to attracting the attention of potential customers; you also want to attract the attention of the press. The best way to do this is by doing something newsworthy. I've seen so many press releases about new hires, companies giving discounts, etc. that they all look the same. To stand out you have to do something very different. These are two great articles on creating newsworthy content:

• http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/news/newsworthy.html
• http://www.howtodothings.com/hobbies/how-to-know-if-a-story-is-newsworthy

6. Keywords Monitoring
One of the best social media tactics is to monitor the top keywords in your industry. That way, when someone mentions them, you can jump in and become part of the conversation. Let's say you sell ballet shoes, your name is Jane Mousekewitz and your site is BalletShoes.com. These are the keywords I would track:

• "ballet shoes"
• "ballet flat shoes"
• "ballet shoe"
• "buy ballet shoes"
• "purchase ballet shoes"
• "ballet shoes" best brand
• "ballet shoes" where to buy
• Jane Mousekewitz
• BalletShoes.com
• BuyBalletShoes.com (your top competitor)

The two tools I use to track keywords are: Google Alerts and SocialMention.

7. Network Development
Developing your network involves two different things:

Quantitative growth: getting more Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, email subscribers, etc. This helps you reach MORE people.

Qualitative growth: talking to your social media connections. Remember, social media is about making friends. This helps you build STRONGER connections that pay MORE ATTENTION to your messages.

VERY IMPORTANT: How to Grow Your Business Using Social Media Marketing
We've talked about how to get thousands of visitors to your blog. Now, let's talk about how you can monetize your traffic. Here are two suggestions:

Have a soft offer and promote it heavily
A soft call to action is something that doesn't require people to spend money. This could be a free report, a free trial, or anything else you can offer for free. And don't feel shy about promoting it. After all, you're giving people something of great value in exchange for an email address. Once someone opts-in, market your paid offer to them but don't be too pushy; remember that they signed up for something that was free.

Have a hard offer but promoted lightly
A hard offer is your paid product or service. You shouldn't promote this much. People go to your blog for content, not to buy your stuff, so don't annoy them by showing them specials. That being said, there's nothing wrong with having a link to your e-store or "Our Services" page in your navigation menu and/or your sidebar. If people love your content, they'll dig around to find out what you do.