 |
 |
|
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. I recommend
Wordpress which can be downloaded and installed by you or your
webmaster. Wordpress download!
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, make friends, and interact with other bloggers on these
networks. 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. Once you have established yourself on all the sites above, meaning
you have a decent profile in each that shows you've been active and
involved, move on and search for networks that are geared toward your
particular market niche. 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, once you've established some authority, will replace
some things you are currently doing to promote your site. 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.
|
