There are things to think about before starting. The most important is your time. Viral marketing through social media really requires a lot of original content and a great amount of time each day and you have to understand the value of your time. This is where Authority SEO helps their clients. Many of the available tools are free to use some are not. That does not mean they don’t come at a high cost, because they most certainly do. They can cost valubale human resource time and customers if not done correctly. It takes time to set up accounts, create content for blogs, to tweet on a regular basis, to tie all of your marketing together and to focus your social media on your main gool.

Before you start with social marketing, make sure your strategy or goal is clear. There is a lot of social media hype and peer pressure to use these technologies. Just make sure you clearly understand your key goals and objectives. For example, are you trying to build direct sales with customers, improve positioning of your product or service, or build your authority in a specific area? Answering these critical questions will help you move forward with your strategy.

Your first step should be to verify whether the audience you are trying to reach is already using social media. If your target market aren’t using Twitter or Facebook, then why spend you resourse there? You also need to do your homework on where the audience you are trying to reach already exists. Are they on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? Are they joining groups or creating new ones? These are all key questions to understanding your audience and how to best engage them.

What are some of the immediate benefits that small businesses are finding with social media?

Well, most small businesses will tell you that social networking can help foster stronger relationships with customers, enable a faster vehicle to answer customer questions, incorporate customer feedback, and build awareness for their expertise. One thing that is gaining prowless in social media is reviews. Customer reviews are becoming more and more important online and this is a good to convert lookers into buyers. 

Many small businesses are still trying to understand how social media can ring the cash register, and Authority SEO has that answer. A Phoenix based website called Natures Organic Market uses Twitter to successfully drawl in followers and send them coupons to use on their website. The company has created followers by posting interesting tweets and sends out the occassional coupon code to use. That means every time the company has something to say and people will receive the message and could retweet it to their friends and so on, potentially reaching way more than Natures Organic’s followers.  Before Twitter, this was lost profit. If you are ready to take a dip into social media give us a call.

 As a small business or large one, the way you spend your time is critical. So if you do decide to pursue social media, make sure that you have the proper tools to help you succeed.  You have to be social at all times or lose that business to your competitors.

As it stands right now Google shows Twitter updates in its regular search engine results page and is the main feature of its real time search boxes.  Also, Bing incorporates Facebook “like” qualities to its search rankings.  The level of involvement of social media in search results will only increase.

Have you ever read something on social media and you know that it was just generic filler information.  Social media is about interacting with your audience or future customers.  The best way to use social media is to engage and interact with your audience.  If you want your information to “go viral” than it has to be genuine of interest to people.

Genuine interest is important as it relates to social media.  Just think of the last thing that you really like in Facebook or Youtube.  What was it that captured your attention and made you send it to your friends and family?

There is no one size fits answer for a company to use social media.  What is universal is having real people handle you presence.  People see auto filler information though real people updating content have the ability to engage and deliver results with social media.

Myspace is now laying off jobs as they are over saturated with employees expecting their rocket growth to continue.

I am not saying not to have a presence on the social networks far from it.  What I am saying what will not come and go is a consistent approach to building your own successful website.  If you spend too much of your resources on social media and that site goes under all that work will be lost.  Even if someone some day over takes Google they still will still need to deliver to people effective websites that deliver the information people are looking for.

You can get up to date on the latest projects Authority SEO is working on from new social sites, blogs, forums, and more.

If you want to know what search engine optimization work Authority SEO is up to then please follow us on Twitter.

]]> http://www.authorityseo.com/2009/06/12/authority-seo-is-now-on-twitter/feed/ 4 http://www.authorityseo.com/2009/06/11/top-10-social-media-websites/ http://www.authorityseo.com/2009/06/11/top-10-social-media-websites/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:37:26 +0000 Authority SEO http://authorityseo.com/?p=206 With the proliferation of social media sites like Facebook there importance and influence on ecommerce and overall web traffic has increased.  One thing to keep in mind is that how social media content is being used is still in its infancy.  For those that understand the key aspects of each social media site can take advantage of the traffic social experiences offers.   Before you start dumping content into social media remember people can tell the difference right away from blatant self promotion of your business and real interaction.

Now that you are going to start social media strategies begin with how you are going to measure success.  Social media websites don’t always send direct traffic to your website so success can be more subjective.  Understanding how you are going to measure success will also support your strategy for how you are going to attack your social online profile.

Top 10 Social Media Sites

1. Youtube.com
2. MySpace.com
3. Facebook.com
4. Bebo.com
5. BlackPlanet.com
6. Tagged.com
7. Imeem.com
8. hi5.com
9. Orkut.com
10. Digg.com

For reference Twitter is ranked number 17th overall though has the highest growth rate in the last year.  The information I got from Ranking.com which ranks millions of different websites.

Bridal Space allows brides to add videos, photos, blogs, messages, and more to interact with other women going through the same life changing event, your wedding.  You can even add your Twitter feed into your Bridal Space site so you can edit and review all your social media from one site.

If you are getting married please visit Bridal Space and join the fun with Wedding101 by Bridal Online Store.

Directly Google Friend Connect won’t drive more traffic to your website.  The goal would be to enhance the social aspects of your site which can allow visitors to interact more.  You would need a fair amount of traffic already to have these features work so people have other people to interact with.

Google in the future which is only a guess on my part could find a way to involve the data from Google Friend Connect into the search algorithm.  Through this service Google would know if your articles are being rated favorably or not, plus would know how many friends and users are interacting.  They could use this information possibly in the future as a way of ranking different sites.

For right now go to Google Friend Connect which you can find by typing it into Google’s search bar and see if any of the social apps apply to your site.

Look for BridalOnlineStore.com as you search online for wedding dresses and other wedding items.