Social media has changed the world of SEO and online marketing. Google adopting ” Search Plus your world” as a signal in ranking shows how social media is getting important for Bloggers and internet marketers. In last couple of years, many social media marketing companies are coming into the market to create brand awareness via Social media promotion. There was a time when traffic to a site was only dependent on search engine and via buying traffic. Now, scenario has completely changes and Internet marketers and Bloggers are using Social media marketing strategies to tap targeted traffic from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Before, I go in-depth of benefits of Social media, lets learn what Social media is all about.
Being a Blogger you have already achieved the first mile-stone in your social media presence and now it’s time to move to leverage the power of these social media sites and turn it into your profit. From a Blogger perspective, it will be more idle if you are driving traffic and converting them into subscribers. From a brand perspective, getting feedback from user/costumer and engaging them on your social media campaign should be first target. Once the trust part builds, converting user into costumer will be more easier. By the end, it’s all come to building trust and reputation.
What is Social media Marketing:
Social media marketing in simple word is process of brand awareness and drive targeted traffic from social media sites. This include using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Video marketing, Flickr, user groups, Forums, Social bookmarking sites, Social news sites and so on. Blogging is also a part of SMM but since this post is targeted for Bloggers, we won’t get in depth of Blogging.
SMM relies mostly on user interaction and comments. A brand success in social media promotion is usually calculated based on conversions.
- Social Media : It refers to websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, YouTube, Flickr, etc. where users or groups of users share the media contents openly. i.e Videos, Images, Songs, Texts, etc
- Social Bookmarking : It’s the system similar to that our web browser’s one. These are the website like DIGG, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc. where users can bookmark favorite url(s) or say blog. Since these bookmarks are visible to every user, if other users would search for same, then he/she will get through the results.
- Social news: Sites like TechMeme are considered as Social news site.
- Social app: With the increasing usage of Smartphones, we can’t afford to ignore the importance of Social reading and Social apps like Zite, Foursquare.
Popular Social media sites:
- YouTube
- Delicious
- Digg
- Facebook
- Google+ (Also impact search engine ranking)
- LinkedIn
- Pinterest
- Reddit
- Stumble-Upon
- Foursquare
Now depending upon your blog niche, you should pick the right social site for your promotion strategy. Here is a nice slide from Slideshare, which will give all newbie about What is SM and why it’s like teen Sex, or not:
Impacts Of Social Media Marketing for Blogger:
Basically in this article I will discus about benefits of social media marketing and its impact on Blog and we need to accept the concept that Blogging and Social Media goes equally hand-to-hand. And for the betterment of readers I divided this topic in two Sub topics.
Benefits Of Social Media Marketing for blog:
It’s impossible to cover promotion technique for all the sites as every Social media site, works differently and need specific promotion strategy. For example, Pinterest and Flickr need Image, Infographics strategy. Youtube and Vimeo need video content, Facebook Need engagement to improve your page visibility and Google+ pages need more niche related discussion.
From a blogger, marketing on SM sites will directly help in more traffic, more links, better PR, Better Alexa rank and other traffic rank and most important more subscribers. And if we look book to golden rule of MMO. More targeted traffic = more sales/Income.
- Get Free & Niche-Oriented Traffic : There are tons of social bookmarking websites floating on web, where an amount of users are interested in niche that your blog is propagating. These users are then transformed to better targeted visitors and results in decreasing bounce rate as they are interested in the topic offered by your blog.
- Increase Google PR and Alexa Ranking : Consider your blog is fetching viral amount of traffic but you don’t’ see much improvement in your Page-rank or Alexa Rank, and some other blog, having less number of visitors but better Alexa Rank. Search Engines and Alexa gives much importance to Social bookmarks, if blog is linked with then it will help you to get better SERP/s and will bring you good PR because those are the one having high-authority among search engines.
- Better Visibility And Popularity : Most of the bookmarking website have the system of vote and ranking, if your content is really good, then you will get fruits for that, as you will get considered amount of votes, will help your blog to get more visibility among the users, resulting to again more traffic. More over, your presence will be global. After all internet is all about being endless.
- Cheap and better conversion : Using other methods to drive traffic like PPC advertising, CPM advertising, Banner ads and other are costly medium, where as social media is cheapest and most reachable medium. More over, demographic and targeting will help you to reduce the cost and time.
Benefits directly for Blog:
Social Media is what much concentrated for business blogs as well as other websites. Business get boosted with social networking websites and for Blogger/s, their blog get higher ranking in search engines.
- Get Higher Ranking And SERP/s : Search Engines give partial importance to the contents shared on Social Media and Networking sites. The main purpose of them is to provide better results for users and its the fact that those contents at Social Media sites are the one introduced by users only. Thus those websites are actually helping search engines indirectly. So, if your blog is active on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus then you will definitely get improved ranking/s and SERP’s. Specially, Google+ has seen as one of the major influential social site for better ranking in search engine.
- Better Crawling of Blog : Social media promotion helps in better and faster crawling of your site and new posts. By promoting old content on social media sites, help in better and deep indexing of your site. You can also set a strategy of creating resource pages like WordPress guide, which will help in more social sharing and deeper indexing of important old content.
- Blog Brand domination : You might have heard about domination of business brand, but at Social Media sites, you get a chance to turn the blog into dominated one. Users will be more active and will be discussing about your blog and work, this will effect your blogs reputation in an better way. This will ultimately bring more traffic and better rankings.
Do’s and Don’ts of Social media Marketing :
Very first suggestion which I would like to give you is, Social media sites are all about being social. Instead of being a machine, you need to be a human. You need to understand people emotions and offer content/media/product based on their mood. Numbers are good for any brand but target more on acquiring target users and consumers. Else, negative comment from un-targeted readers might not be very pleasant for brand reputation. For example, you posting about
Adsense earnings and every one starts asking about, is making money online possible? And such question. Rather, your real win is when people actually talk and discus about points mentioned by you or add their tip.
So lets, look into some of the things which you should and should not do on social media sites:
Do’s:
- Engage with Users
- Post in a schedule manner. Post daily or regular interval.
- Share links/Images/Video related to your niche and your comment or better ask a question.
- Make your rules/Philosophy and follow it.
- Keep an eye on Social media trend and upcoming sites in your niche.
- Talk about trending topic in your niche/market.
- Keep your profile information up to date.
- Target users based on demographic and interest.
- Monitor brand presence on Social media sites.
- Add humor and add personal touch into your updates and comments.
- Keep an eye on competitor strategies.
- Increase trust, Loyalty and brand awareness.
Dont’s:
- Avoid over posting
- Don’t drink and update on Social media sites
- Avoid spamming (Too much of self promotion is spamming in a way)
- Avoid buying Fans, Users and don’t use bots to increase your number.
- Never fight with your readers. Stay calm! Avoid insulting your fans, subscribers.
- Don’t ignore single feedback and comment. Acknowledge all of them.
- Don’t spent too much time on Social media sites. Your target is to do business and a successful business is measured by number of sales. From Blogger perspective, it’s traffic and revenue generated via it. It could be your affiliate sales, email subscription or simple ad views.
Conclusion:
At last, I need to conclude that Blogging is not just about SEO and content writing, with other important factors like Social Media & social Bookmarking are added then it will give new way to blogging career. It will not only help you, but at the same time will help the readers, and helping is the prime motto of Bloggers!
Here are some more meaningful article on web, which will help you to learn more:
P.S: User engagement is the key for Blogger. It helps in building trust and brand reputation.
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