This is the continued Getting started guide to Social Media. In the last post, you could read about how you can get started with some basic social networking, using social bookmarking tools and your own blog.

This time, it’s about getting noticed and contributing to your social network.

Why promote your social media?

There are several reasons to promote your contributions to Social Media. It depends on your reasons for using Social Media, and what your goals are. Here are some reasons that may fit your profile.

• Spread the word about your niche or focus area.
• Grow your personal fame or influence.
• Make money on your blog.
• Market your company.
• Connect with fun people.
• [Your reason here]

The big reason to spread the word and get people connected to your idea is that without people, there’s no social media. Whether you are passionate about your own fame or a cause, your social strength will grow with your number of connections, readers and contributors.

What you are after is Social Media Marketing.

Basics of Social Media Marketing

So what is Social Media Marketing? Do you need a degree in marketing to be successful promoting Social Media? Actually, it is more beneficial for you to not know anything about traditional marketing. Unfortunately, if you are already a marketer, you need to unlearn a lot of concepts to really be successful at Social Media Marketing.

If you are schooled in traditional marketing, try reading the book Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin. It will hopefully start you off on the right path.

In fact, by following the getting started guide in this series, you have already started with your Social Media Marketing. It is about spreading ideas and concepts, about people and opinions. Broadcasting a message to a large audience is not part of Social Media Marketing, and is frequently ineffective in Social Media.

Succeeding in Social Media (and thereby Social Media Marketing) requires time, commitment and sincerity.

• Time – you need to allocate the time to manage your social activities and networks. Social Media Marketing is not about running a campaign in an advertising network (although you can, of course, put ads on many social networks, like Facebook). You need to put the time in to either contribute a lot yourself or facilitate key influencers that do.
• Commitment – stay engaged, and stay focused to your social network. If you digress from the focus of the network or only contribute sporadically, your network will lose interest. You would probably stop reading media that only gives you information sporadically, too, wouldn’t you?
• Sincerity – people listen to contributors to their Social Media channels because of their authority. It’s about contributing well-informed content, which is always relevant to the specific social network.

A two way street

If you are not perceived as sincere (by not putting in time, not staying committed or losing focus), it may backfire on your Social Media Marketing efforts. You may have heard of the so-called “Google Bomb” on the White House a while back, where a huge amount of blogs linked the phrase “miserable failure” to whitehouse.gov presidential page. For two years, people searching for that phrase on Google, were directed to George W. Bush’s page.

Perhaps the same won’t happen to you, but the downside of Social Media is that if a bad reputation spreads about you, and it’s strong enough, you will have a very difficult time stopping it.

Be the good guy

Here is the difficult part, if you are part of a large brick-and-mortar organization; there is nowhere to hide. You cannot run campaigns to influence public opinions like you used to. Any and all interactions with your company will be scrutinized, and out of every dissatisfied customer, about 1% will write about their experience. All interactions with your customers count, from call center to website.

If you are engaging in Social Media for your personal use, or for your small company, the same rules count. However, it is easier for you to manage your interactions with readers or customers.

You have to come across as the sincere, authoritative good guy. If you make a mistake (we all do, after all), be sincere about your apology to those affected, and compensate them for their loss.

Where do I use Social Media Marketing?

Start with these 4 steps.

1. Comment on the blogs you follow. If it’s a large blog, your post may be the 50th comment posted. Do it anyway – for two reasons. One, you may attract attention to your own blog (most blogs let you link your name to a url). The other reason is that you build the number of links to your website, from sources that are ranked highly by search engines. By getting linked to from highly ranked websites, your website will rank higher as well. Comment on this post, if you like.
2. Social bookmark your own posts as well as the ones from blogs you follow. If you have written something brilliant, people are likely to find and share your bookmarks.
3. Digg your posts as well. Make sure you write original content in your posts and add them to your Digg profile. Sites like Digg, Propeller, Reddit and others let you add links similar to social bookmarking sites, but they add a voting functionality where you can vote for the pages you like. Vote for your own posts, but vote for anyone else relevant to your focus area (see my previous post about selecting your focus area), even your competitors. If your profile lists a lot of relevant pages, you are more likely to attract followers who don’t know you. That way you build your reputation, a very important aspect of Social Media Marketing.
4. If you’re an expert (or once you’ve become one), try to help others in your focus area. One way is to post best practices and lists (like this one). Another is to select discussion forums (include your blog url in the signature – but only one url) and Answers networks (like on Linkedin – professional networking – and Yahoo – more general questions).

There are a lot more strategies for Social Media Marketing, and I will get more into detail with links to resources in a later post.

Next time

Getting involved for Personal reasons or for Business purposes? We are getting closer to defining a strategy for Social Media, the next post includes tips on Social Media Marketing for Business or Pleasure.

Filed under: Social Media Marketing
Tags:Networking, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy