Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide

Monday, April 28th, 2008 by Jon Rognerud

Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide

By Jon Rognerud

Quick!

What is the hottest social media tool to emerge on the scene this year? It’s ‘Twitter’, and you may get hooked too…

SMX Social Media I recently came back from a fully packed conference on social media marketing, the Danny Sullivan SMX show in Long Beach, CA, and all-the-rage was Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that many at first (typically) considered a ‘joke’ or maybe just a temporary fad. They (we) were all wrong, but most agreed that using any tool or technique without a reasonable strategy was a missed opportunity.

But, let’s not be too quick – learn how to research & leverage the social media space with planning and execution along the way.

I’ll show you that micro blogging and the other tools and platforms in this short SMM guide are things you might consider for your important social media marketing.

Furthermore, SMM can provide quality traffic, you can minimize the often laborious time by a little planning and it is possible to market into B2B marketplaces. It’s not just for kids anymore.

What is it?

“Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks”. Social Media is a shorter top level term that describes the space overall, and covers the activities around social interaction, content, videos, images and audio exposure.

Where to start?

Many of us are so excited about the technology and web (hence my somewhat trite opening), that we forget key pieces to success: definition of business goals, objectives and overall process for execution. The old “fail to plan, plan to fail” comes to mind. While you need to create the roadmap for your online business – you must certainly decide on what goals and resulting metrics you want to attain.

Social media marketing can help you increase the activity around these top goals:

Website traffic and user behavior (external and internal tracking)
Conversion and sales tracking
Page views, ad exposure
Growing brand awareness (a softer value, takes longer to build)
Creating a positive brand association and keeping it there (see also reputation management)
Business development and a broader customer reach

How can you create and convert all this activity with social media?

Since the social web allows you to interact with others, create and promote content that can get links and viral attraction, you can – with the right strategy – reach key influencers using this medium. We all know what blogs alone can do, and they are pretty search engine friendly out of the box.

Social media expansion is important because this provides foundations for broader / faster mindshare, along with supporting your search engine marketing objectives. You *can* convert traffic if you target appropriately (research needed), and do not spam. Read each point below to get a deeper understanding.

Tip #1 – Assistance:
Limit talking about yourself, at least initially – provide ways to help others instead. This is probably the most important tip in the social media workplace. Say you are building your new del.icio.us profile, make sure to bookmark other useful resources and sprinkle yourself lightly. It’s about “them”, not “you”. Don’t forget this important rule!

Tip #2 – Process:
Don’t become a “me too” – establish a process and goals for how to get there. I recommend reading 5 pillars for one, and much like SEO programs that have a process (keyword research, competitive review, content analysis, etc), build out a similar map. Too many companies dive in too fast, with no real plan and they are simply peeing in the pool, and no good results come from that.

Tip #3 – Contribute:
Be the one to create (quality) content. While community is Queen in Social Media, quality content is still King, and always will be. Studies show that people are reading much online, but a much smaller group is contributing content. This can mean good opportunities for you.

Tip #4 – Connect:
Reach out to the influencers in your niche, be polite, honest, sincere, and you’d be amazed what brand advocates can do for you.

Tip #5 – Position:
Position yourself in front of consumers’ passions. It can and will create a powerful outcome for your brand.

Tip #6 – Blog:
Make sure you have setup a blog. These numbers are not to be overlooked. I think Technorati is tracking over 110 million blogs now, and growing at a furious pace, even excluding splogs (spam blogs).

Tip #7 – Links:
Don’t be afraid to link out to other blogs and websites in general. Links are what search engines and users make good use of – and search engines would not survive without them. Give others the love too.

Tip #8 – Videos:
Video consumption is growing fast. Create a “how to…” or “top tips…” videos and submit to YouTube. It has wide reach, and you could have millions of people see it. For even wider distribution, you should try tubemogul.com or vidmetrix.com, tools to help automate. In generating all content, make sure to keep #1 rule in check. It’s fine to brand with a URL at the end of the video, but no direct selling. Humor, controversy and weird stuff works very well, keep that in mind – don’t be afraid to test.

Tip #9 – Technorati:
You said you have a blog, right? Claim your blog at Technorati. This will ensure you are indexed in their search engines for blogs and updates are broadcast across the network, along with your own blog network updates. This happens behind the scenes from automatic “pings”.

Tip #10 – Analytics:
Open an account from list below, use your brand name as identifier. This will establish your brand or company name, and not let anybody else assume or steal your personality so easily. Then, work with one or two from the list below to start, and don’t go too fast. Look at your web analytics and track referring domains and review traffic movements daily, weekly.

Tip #11 – Feeds/Research:
Subscribe to feeds, and use iGoogle, My Yahoo Web or other favorite RSS readers. Watch for changes (use Google.com/alerts also), and be the first to comment and engage in your topic. First commenters often get more visibility and traction.

Tip #12 – MicroCommunities:
Locate and join microcommunities – they are social communities that are relevant to your business. Some examples are education.com, nowpublic.com, travbuddy.com, gardenweb.com, shoetube.com, yelp.com and care2.com (non profits). It is much easier to have your voice heard in these and similar markets, than trying a post to Digg that may go nowhere. Those are the perfect places for the “big fish in a small pond” rule. Create highly relevant and linkworthy content, research what others are writing about, and connect with the top players and influencers.

Tip #13 – Submit:
Review the resources below, and consider building out profiles over time. If you submit content, make sure it’s useful, unique and that the title of your post stands out. Pick one or two resources to start, and don’t overextend yourself. Some of the top social marketers in the industry spend 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. This is a lot of manual (social) labor, but you don’t have to go at it that hard. Make sure to ask friends to vote or comment on your postings, befriend others, but no spam. Make intelligent posts and do not have your company employees post from the same location (IP Address). The submission(s) will most likely be rejected, and worst case, your account blocked or suspended.

Tip #14 – Hosting:
Have a good hosting provider. If traffic spikes come, and your server instrastructure cannot handle it, you are toast. You don’t want a Digg server melt-down (fun pic). Here’s a first hand story and how to deal with it.

Tip #15 – Monitoring:
If you want to save time monitoring across many resources within the social networks, try the new Yahoo Pipes, it’s a social monitoring desktop in a browser.

Tip #16 – Advertising:
If you are an advertiser, you might want to check out socialspark.com and socialmedia.com – they both are showing promise from what I can see.

Your Top Social Media Starter Resources (not necessarily in order of importance):

Twitter *See more below – specific for twitter
Facebook (download toolbar)
YouTube (toolbar exists, but have not tried)
Del.icio.us (download toolbar)
StumbleUpon (download toolbar)
LinkedIn (tip: use the Q/A section to gain readership and clients)
Flickr
Digg
Reddit
Technorati
Secondlife (3D)
Meneame (spanish, translate title and synopsis before posting)
Newsvine
Tip: Subscribe (RSS) to Techcrunch!

Twitter bonus: (Thanks GrayWolf)

Web Browser Plugin: twitterfox
Desktop: twhirl, alertthingy
Blog Tools: loud twitter
Email: twittermail ((abc…@twittermail) – cool tip: schedule to post when you are not online)
Phones: twitterberry (BlackBerry), itweet (iPhone)
Other: tweetscan (alerts, keyword, user search)
Competitor: Pownce.com – check it out along with friendfeed.com

About Jon Rognerud

Jon Rognerud is a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant in Los Angeles, and is the founder of www.chaosmap.com. His new internet marketing book was launched in April 2008, the “Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization”, currently on Amazon and available in bookstores nationwide.

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

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62 comments on “Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide”

Gilberto Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 6:56 am

Very usefull article.
Thank you
gil
@CoachDeb Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 6:57 am

Aloha!

Great post!

Love Tip #14 – Hosting

It’s one of THE most overlooked aspects of online marketing…

BUT – when your efforts pay off and a flood of traffic wants to come to your site, and it’s not there – it’s too late to think about better hosting or upgrades to a virtual private server to handle the mass of visitors to your blog.
Seologia Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 9:21 am

Twitter truly is the latest fad. The only problem “with it” is that people don’t feel like installing it until they have lots of known friends on it. That’s a problem if you’re in a country outside USA’s WOM.

Seologia’s last blog post..El mito del PageRank
SEO Guide best practices Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 10:45 am

Thanks Jon,great article. Those are really best practices to approach Social Media, I have done it myself and have found good results. I will add one more: Join related groups in those social sites and participate helping others. Keep up the good work.

SEO Guide best practices’s last blog post..Duplicate Content Issues: Building a Healthy Site Structure
Karen Swim Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

Jon, SMM has so many moving parts that it is easy to get overwhelmed. I appreciate the tips you offered which provide key insight into the “why” and “how” of social media.
Hjörtur Smárason Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

Great tips, Jon. Number 1, giving before receiving is never too often repeated.
Brett Borders Says:

April 28th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Jon,

Nice to meet you at SMX Social Media (during lunch on the second day) when were talking to the domainer and his son.
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April 28th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

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Jon Rognerud Says:

April 29th, 2008 at 12:56 am

Thanks for the responses and the indirect ‘welcome’ too, this being my first post on MP. Cheers, Jon
Campbell Says:

April 29th, 2008 at 5:20 am

This is a very useful post and the best I have seen. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I really also like the idea of niche social networking and I think it may be the future.
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April 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm

Very very good post. it’s help me a lot.
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Ante Vekic Says:

May 2nd, 2008 at 2:47 am

Just to add one more to the twitter bonus list:
Summize.com – great realtime twitter search. You can search conversation threads, and find out who and what is being spoken about your brand
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May 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 am

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Jon Rognerud Says:

May 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Thanks,Ante – I was only aware of http://quotably.com/ (nicely formatted threaded, indented lists). I’ll bookmark summize as well, thanks for the tip! – J
Utah SEO Says:

May 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 pm

SMX Social Media was great. This is a great summary of a lot of the content covered there and a good guide for SMM too.

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Hiren Modi Says:

May 8th, 2008 at 9:50 am

It’s really nice article and helpful as well for Social Media Marketing.
Chi-chi Ekweozor Says:

May 8th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

Two tools to add to the Twitter list:

Who Should I Follow:
http://www.whoshouldifollow.com

A site which provides recommendations of whom you should follow on Twitter. Remarkably accurate…

TweetWheel:
http://www.tweetwheel.com

Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other.

Less tool than mindless fun but entertaining all the same.

Thanks for a useful article!

Chi-chi Ekweozor’s last blog post..Real Fresh TV Partners with PUMA On A Social Media Search To Find Manchester’s Most Promising Band
Jon Rognerud Says:

May 12th, 2008 at 3:08 am

Hello Chi-chi:
I appreciated your follow-up, and I liked the WhoShouldIFollow.com – it helped me a lot, actually.

Another very interesting use of maps and Twitter is http://twittervision.com/ – check it out!

Cheers, Jon
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July 1st, 2008 at 5:08 pm

My issue with social media marketing is that there will always be more social media websites each year, and it is hard to keep track of which ones to really focus on. Sure Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are the current leaders, but just a few years ago it was Friendster and Livejournal. Times change, and devoting too much to a failing site can be costly.
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September 28th, 2008 at 5:15 am

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Rakesh Purohit Says:

December 18th, 2008 at 7:31 am

truly beginners guide. best guide on social media marketing! thanks.
Jon Rognerud Says:

December 18th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

Hi Rakesh,

Thanks so much, it was fun to build. This was in April this year, so much has happened. I’d love to connect and “talk” more – I’m at http://www.twitter.com/jonrognerud – have a blessed holiday!

Cheers, Jon
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alexa Says:

January 14th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

Hey Guys,

I love this article it is very helpful. I am very new to this and trying to get a grasp of how to get started. The only thing I cannot figure out is how to do social marketing for a business. How do you get friends being a business? Don’t people assume you just want to advertise? Also, I was wondering if anybody knows a good way to get affiliates? I own a great webiste that needs more exposure and we offer affiliate bonus of $50 for every referal. Just not sure where to find affiliates. Was hoping somehow to combine this with social media marketing. Any ideas?
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Reid Says:

February 27th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

Outstanding recap, Jon. It seems that in the past 2-3 months, the companies we’re working with have already been sold on the concepts of SEO/SEM and now want to really dive into Social Media Marketing. It’s fun to participate in this space.

Thanks for the great information.
Fanatical About Support Says:

May 27th, 2009 at 1:42 am

Nice post and I really like these tips. For beginner to social media this articles too helpful.

Thanks & regards,
Alex – UK
Anthony Dayal Says:

May 28th, 2009 at 6:33 am

thanks this is a very nice social media related article, but now social media is main work to increase your site traffic so i request you please you increase more details in future.
Stuart Rubenstein Says:

May 28th, 2009 at 6:35 am

thanks, this is a very nice social media related article and social media site, but now social media is main work to increase site traffic so i request you please you increase more social media related details and new social media site details in future.

Marketing Pilgrim