Designing and building a social media campaign that’s successful is a bit like designing and building a highrise. First, you need to research your material, then you need to put down a solid foundation, and then you need to continue with regular maintenance to ensure your social media promotion is a success.
The Proper Building Blocks
The proper building blocks are key to successful social media marketing. The strongest social media plan needs to include the following building blocks:
Democratized Social News Sites
These tools permit online marketers to network with a community by both voting on content and by submitting your own content for others to vote on. Examples include Reddit and Mixx.
Social Sites
These sites offer a fantastic opportunity to build and interact with a network, and to publish your original content in a number of forms such as videos, photos, links, news, and more. Examples include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, just to name a few.
Editor Controlled News Sites
When content the user submits fits the editorial guidelines it is accepted and distributed. These high-profile websites can produce enormous results. Yahoo is a great example of a news site.
MicroBlogging Sites
These include sites like Twitter and Friendfeed, where your comments are limited to 140 characters or less. Keep your comments interesting. A great way to broadcast to a large audience.
Social Bookmarking Sites
A great tool for marketers are social bookmarking sites where you can submit URLs of interest to sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon, which will drive targeted traffic to specific page. These sites are great for doing research pertaining to the type of content that your audience is interested in.
Wiki Sites
If you want to dominate search results, Wikis are a great tool, because they frequently rank high. Use wikis to reach new audiences by posting original content and editing existing content.
Social Question & Answer Sites
Marketers can answer existing questions and post new questions on sites such as Wiki Answers and Yahoo! Answers. This is a great way to develop and grow brand reputation and become an authority. It’s also an excellent way to do audience research.
Social Content Sharing Sites
Flickr and YouTube, are just a couple of the sites that let you post specific content types, from photos to video to reviews. These sites can aid marketers to build brand recognition and to target relevant audiences.
Niche Sites
These sites target a specific niche, such as Chihuahuas, Italian wine, blogging, Real Estate, Virtual Assistant, and lots more. As a marketer these are excellent because you are able to target an extremely relevant audience.
Hope that you will come back for part 2 on this Understanding the Playing Field of Social Media Marketing.
Annis Sutherland
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