Social marketing is an often misunderstood form of marketing that is reaping huge rewards for website owners who use it. Most webmasters who understand it, even while being very new to social marketing, are seeing results like:

1. Higher search engine rankings for their top keywords

2. More rankings of additional keywords or “long tail” keyword phrases

3. More link popularity from sites linking on their own accord

4. More link popularity from social media sites

5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting and interaction

6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites (One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of visitors alone.)

7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique visitors month after month

8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic, properly acquired, is very warm to your message and products.

The problem for most people when thinking about social marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction.

They assume established social marketers gained their “social authority” in a short period of time. This is simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites exists, it is an embarrassment of riches.

And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual process you manage with all your other responsibilities and grow as time allows.

What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time each day to get one more link, participate in one more conversation, or sign up for one more account on a social site.

A little goes a long way and social marketing is not an “all or nothing” situation. After some time you will become established on the social sites you need to have a presence on. And you will have a schedule that allows you to keep up with your other work while adding this extremely powerful marketing method to the mix.

10 Steps For Starting a Social Marketing Campaign

1. Schedule a bit of time each day to do some new things. Don’t just say you are going to do them. Write the time into your day and follow through.

2. Sign up for the major social news sites: Digg.com, Propeller.com, Mixx.com. Don’t submit anything to these sites until you have filled out your profile completely and submitted news from elsewhere on the web to generate a real presence and avoid being labeled as a spammer.

In fact, BE a real presence and don’t try to push your own content onto the networks you belong to. It should feel and be natural and you will know what “natural is on each network by participating, commenting, voting and getting a general sense of what members think is good and bad content. Watch their comments and votes and you will know how to proceed with your own site’s content from there.

3. If you don’t have a blog, you must install one immediately. This is not an option. It is an absolute necessity on today’s web. Our company uses Wordpress and recommends it over any other blogging platform, and it can be installed easily by you or your webmaster. Wordpress download: http://wordpress.org/download/

Option #2: Check with your web host to see if they have Fantastico available to you and, if so, that it installs the latest version of Wordpress. If so you are very lucky because the software can be installed by you very easily in just a few steps with Fantastico.

4. Once you have your blog set up, join the following networks. (These are blog communities that will help you generate visitors, authority, and links and most bloggers belong to them.) MyBlogLog.com (install the widget on your Wordpress blog), and BlogCatalog.com. (they also have a widget to install)

5. Join groups, interact with other publishers, and make friends with the easy networking tools these sites provide. Especially the people who would be most likely to link to your blog and send you traffic who write about similar things or have an audience similar to yours who’d benefit by knowing you. You can even start your own group, promote it in the network, and send “shouts” to the group when you have announcements or need attention to a new post.

6. As soon as you establish yourself on the sites mentioned above, move on to other sites like them that might be more targeted directly to your niche and the market you work in. There are a lot of new “vertical” social sites popping up that focus on much more narrow markets and their membership is far warmer to your kind of information than on the bigger, more general networks above.

Add a new site to the mix as often as you can and repeat the steps for becoming established there as mentioned in Step 2 above.

7. Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up tips from other social marketers and find new places you can sign up with to continue building your social authority. New sites pop up every single day. Follow places like Go2Web20.net to find new opportunities to connect with your market.

8. Remote blog. Join blogger.com and put content there that is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great content you find as you travel through all the social news sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over time.

9. Track your progress diligently. If something you are trying on a social network isn’t working, you need to know that in order to save time and move on to something more fruitful. MyBlogLog.com (above) has a tracking system which will show you where your traffic is coming from so you can avoid time wasting efforts and focus more on the sites that are really pulling in good traffic for you.

10. Don’t freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.

Social marketing can partially or completely replace other methods you are using to promote your site including paid advertising. Many people completely drop their paid advertising or PPC campaigns once they see the organic, natural traffic and search engine rankings pile up from social marketing.

Until then, just take it one step at a time and do some social marketing. A little goes a long way and before you know it, you will reach a point where a lot of traffic and lots of search engine rankings are piling up because you simply started doing something each day.

There’s a lot you can learn about social marketing. And not all of it can be found on free blogs.

So you’ve got a visual presence, are on all of the social networking sites and send messages like crazy but you’re finding that the human element, although seemingly everywhere you look, is oddly… missing.
How is it that you can have a photo, an about me paragraph, and hundreds of virtual friends but still miss the boat?
One thing probably nobody has told you about social marketing and social networking (that is, up until now) is that you can’t just have a visual presence online and expect to be the beneficiary of overwhelming success because of some strategically placed keywords and an enviable list of hobbies.
What you do need, however, is a way to talk to people naturally to give them a taste of who you are and what you sound like. People enjoy hearing the voices of other people, particularly if that person is of interest to them or has something to of value to offer.
Sounds good, you say, but how can you get down with the crowd when marketing to them without sounding salesy?
Custom Audio & Social Marketing
One way is to record an audio message of yourself talking, perhaps even go as far as making a podcast, and post it on your social networking sites. Places like Facebook and MySpace give you the opportunity to share audio on your profile for others in your circle of acquaintance to listen to.
Listening to someone talk can be very reassuring, and for those being listened to, has the potential to be very profitable.
This marketing technique, when blended with public relations, can be extremely effective. Using an audio recording as part of your approach to deliver a genuine message to spur on your company, product or service opens the door to a greater sense of community and shows that you’re reaching out and want to be part of the action.
What better way is there to build trust, virtually connect with others and develop a following online than to make yourself accessible using your voice, the most powerful tool in your arsenal?
You don’t have worry about too much in the technology department to provide an authentic sample of your personality when recording. You can easily make a no-frills MP3 recording on your own using free audio recording software, but if you want to kick it up a notch, I suggest spicing it up a bit with some music, sound effects and even the help of a professional voice actor.
Voice Overs & Social Marketing
To really give them a treat, you might consider working with an internet voice talent on the recordings, perhaps even using their voice to brand your company.
Now, if you are intimidated by audio recording, production or editing (maybe all of the above), it’s a no-brainer to go with someone who can look after all of it for you while adding significant value and letting you shine.
Your voice is a very important aspect of who you are, and when you’re in the trenches of online marketing and staking your ground in the vast landscape of social networking, it may be one of the only things that sets you apart from competitors in the same field.
This is of particular importance if you happen to be the voice or personality at your company that is known to your customers and the public.

ial Media Marketing is a powerful tool, but also is hard to control. This article features a couple recent cases in which social marketing has failed or gone wrong.

The Wal-Mart case

In August 2007, Wal-Mart started its own Facebook profile, aimed on students. The goal was to stimulate the consumer behavior of students on their student rooms. After a few weeks the original goal of the â??Wal-Mart Roommate Style Matchâ?? was far forgotten.

Visitors of Wal-Martâ??s room decoration page can leave comments; a function intended to receive praise on the decoration tool, or a few suggestions for improvement at worst. Wal-Mart did probably not expect to have their complete Facebook Wall filled with criticism on its low wages, aversion to trade unions and unhealthy competition practices.

Marketers should keep this in mind when offering customers the option to make their opinions public. You could have many satisfied customers, but when you expect a small group of â??brand terroristsâ?? to vent their frustrations for the whole world to see, you might want to think twice about opening a brand page on a social network site.

One of the visitors said Wal-Martâ??s biggest mistake was putting a â??Wallâ?? on their profile.

Wal-Mart â?? The second attempt

Packed with the experience of their last campaign a new attempt on social marketing was made. Wal-Mart announced the launch of a Social Marketing Campaign by allowing users to review content on their site.

A Social network site was launched for kids on the wal-mart website named â??The Hubâ??. What happened was, parents had to be informed of every new registration which isnâ??t very â??coolâ?? for the kids, although itâ??s great for parents. All content got screened by third a third party, while social networks are joined to express yourself in the way you want to. Next to that there were no options to PM or mail each other. Communication possibilities are a basic requirement for a social network site.

The marketers shouldâ??ve realized that just one stage of child-protection is the best they can do to keep kids safe while building a popular social network. People need to be given control and have the ability to allow two-way conversations to flow without you being the only one talking.



The Molson photo contest

In November 2007, Molson pulled the plug on its Facebook photo contest. Molson’s online marketing campaign, in which students were encouraged to post pictures of themselves partying on campus, was â??misinterpretedâ? as promoting irresponsible drinking.

â??We need to be communicating with our consumers because that’s where our consumers are communicating among themselves. We need to make sure we’re in that relevant channelâ?, the company said.

Marketers have to be more subtle than Molson in trying to capture users’ attention. The risk always remains that the marketer can lose control of its brand. Molson is wading into uncharted territory and stepped over the line of acceptability with its Facebook campaign.

The 2008 Ford Focus, unfocussed?

In October 2007, online ads were seen about a man who roars, moves and behaves like a lion. â??Fakeâ?? news articles were found as well; â??The Lion-Man Escapes From High-Security University Research Centreâ?.

The relation between the â??The Lion-Manâ?? and the Ford Focus stayed undiscovered by the big public. The viral failed because it was too hard to figure out what it was about. It also seems to have no purpose â?? thereâ??s no payoff. There are no clear call-to-action events, no â??go out and buy thisâ??, nothing.

A lot of wasted money that ended up in an ad that looks more like a practical joke, rather than a viral campaign. Fordâ??s attempt on putting up a Facebook page featuring the â??Lion-Man of Tanzaniaâ? ended up having 0 subscribers.

Titleistâ??s fictional golfer

Titleist is a major golfing product manufacturer that created a website for a fictional golfer and promoted it offline using formats like television advertising during major golf tournaments.

Offline marketing for an online campaign can sometimes work but itâ??s so much easier and cheaper to get things promoted online. Although the site really isnâ??t that bad, thereâ??s no call-to-action for people to share the content or any incentives for them to upload music and videos which the site hopes they will do. People seem to forget all too easily that good content just wonâ??t go viral â?? great content can and sometimes will. The videos on the site are good but arenâ??t great.

Titleistâ??s marketers should have looked at ways to promote their product online via social networks where they could have gotten their video more attention and website traffic. Donâ??t spend big dollars on TV advertising if you donâ??t have a website to back it up.

 

sources:

http://lab.77agency.com/social-marketing/social-marketing-gone-wrong-the-wal-mart-case-250/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071125.wmolsonn1125/BNStory/Technology/home

http://namw.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/viral-marketing-gone-wrong/

http://www.viperchill.com/blog/2-social-media-marketing-failures/