Search Engine Optimization was once a misunderstood and powerful tool to increase the traffic of your website. If you knew what you were doing, SEO could have been your sole method of marketing on the web. Now, SEO is more understood but more costly to actually impact your traffic. Google has even made some recent updates that favor big brands that makes it even more difficult for the smaller players to invest in SEO. Now Social Marketing is the cost effective method of driving traffic to your website but it can be intimidating to know where to begin.
Do I advertise on MySpace or Facebook? Do I create a Twitter account or create a Blog? Do I promote my business or myself? These are all questions that everyone is asking because it is confusing out there. The social landscape is as powerful as what SEO was for a long time but just as elusive. If you did some research, you would also find opposing opinions on every front as well. Just as when everyone thought SEO was some sort of Voodoo magic, now people are feeling the same about social marketing. Nevertheless, what people eventually learned about SEO is also true about Social Marketing, it isn’t as complicated as you think and there is a ton of money to be made.
The first thing you need to understand is that Social Marketing is about connecting with the anonymous web. Anonymity is beginning to fade and now people are starting to put a face to the screen name. Social Marketing isn’t really about conversions and page impressions. Although, by being successful with Social Marketing you hope to influence these understood metrics and increase your revenue. Social Marketing is really about being popular, on the web. Don’t you remember High School? The popular kids were the ones that got what they wanted and seemed to have the most fun. The same is true with Social Marketing, you need to become popular and create a level of influence that will translate to an increase in your revenue. Influence is difficult to measure though and you might be weary to invest the time necessary to be successful without clearly understanding the metrics behind it. Regardless, you would be doing yourself and your company a disservice if you don’t take a serious look at increasing your social influence.
The best advice I can give you is to just get out there and be yourself. Unlike High School, the social web is much more diverse and you’re better off building social influence in your niche instead of trying to cater to everyone. You need to be where your audience is on the web and become popular within the community that will actually buy your products or services. Identifying your target audience can be as difficult as identifying the right Keywords to rank for in the search engines. Building connections in your target audience is just like link building and the more connections you make and value you provide to your target audience will ultimately lead to an increase in your bottom line and that is what this is all about.
