Social media is an amazing FREE resource for businesses.
What Is SMM And SMO?
Few can deny the powerful effect that video has on people. The ability of video to grab a person’s attention is undervalued by today’s average business. Each user watches over 14 hours of online video every month according to recent ComScore statistics. Many people also don’t realize that just because someone has clicked on your video, does NOT mean that they will care at all.
Social Media Marketing, sometimes known as SMM or SMO (Social Media Optimization), is the active engagement in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, to promote a good, service, cause, bias, or really anything you want. By leveraging the mass of users on social networking sites, as well as the ability to share content instantly, your message has a direct pipeline into the consumer’s community. Promotions, sales, special events, etc, can be rapidly distributed via this social media pipeline. A social media campaign can be as simple as having a Twitter account and adding “Follow us on Twitter” to your web page or blog. An SMM campaign can also be as complicated as a full online marketing campaign using videos, blogs, multiple social networking sites, and consistent promotions.
Social Media Marketing at its core is a very simple process. If you have ever finished reading an article and saw “tweet this,” or “dig this,” then you have just experienced a form of SMM. The goal of all of this is to have many people tweet or digg your article, and therefore that post becomes more and more visible on the web as it is Liked or Dugg. The result of greater visibility is of course, more eyes, which translates into more likes, which further translates into more visibility, and more business. The key to social media marketing is two fold. The first is to gather support for your content. The second is to monetize your response.
Monetizing Social Media.
Whenever you make a video, or write an article, you are no doubt creating them to be viewed, or read. Search Engine Optimization is a great method of getting eyes on your webpage, but search engines are no where near as personal as social media communities, and as everyone who has ever studied marketing theory will tell you, word of mouth is the most powerful driving force for sales. Whenever a user on Facebook “likes” a page, that is as good as a recommendation to anyone who knows that person especially if you offer some kind of promotion when people “like” you. It is also possible to create a snowball effect of support for your page.
After you have gained enough “fans” on your Facebook page, or “followers” on your Twitter feed, you can begin to monetize your social community.
The more likes, followers, or friends you have, the bigger the online response. For example, if you have a large base of followers and run a promotion or contest you can expect a large response, possibly turning “viral” in your social community. The chance of anyone on these social networks joining in on your promotions and contests greatly increases the more followers you have. This is an obvious factor, but necessary to understand before entering into the social media marketing world. The key factor to gaining friends and followers is to create exciting content. Content that engages and informs. It is important to look at monetizing your social media from a long term perspective as well as the short term. Paid Facebook ads and other similar services are great for short term gain and to build a fanbase. This service is not to be confused with Organic SEO which refers to the process of being ranked naturally and without paid advertisements.
Being Found On The Web.
If anyone is researching your company while shopping around, they may very well go onto Facebook or Twitter to check you out. Not being availalble on these networking communities can really hurt you at this step, especially if your competition IS there. If you do have a presense on the social networking sites, the next question is: Can you be found? Similar to the process of SEO, your social media pages can be optimized for specific keywords. Small changes on your page can mean being found or not, and that can translate into whether or not you gain a new customer. Is expending a little effort on your Facebook page worth a customer? We definitely think so.
The search engines DO index social media profiles and pages. The majority of times, your page will only show up when a user does a search engine query concerning your business name. With SMO, you have the potential to show up for more generalized searches than just your company name. While social media pages rarely lack the content and substance that are required to rank, by putting in time cultivating your social networking pages, you can create another great set of links for the search engines.
With this basic knowledge in mind, you can begin building a knowledge base on how social media marketing works. Remember that the end result of properly executed SMM techniques will always culminate in higher sales conversions, and more repeat business. Let us help you keep up on this rapidly evolving technology!