Social Marketing

Social marketing uses the sound techniques of Internet marketing and the proven power behind word-of-mouth advertising to create instant buzz for a company’s products, services and brand. Through highly visited social sites like MySpace and Facebook, interest-driven networks like Stumbleupon and Del.icio.us, and popularity-based sites like Digg and Reddit, companies are using Social marketing techniques to effectively reach their target audiences.

What is social marketing?
Social marketing is the indirect spread of a website’s products, services, information, and opinions through channels and networks formed by various social groups a/k/a “virtual friends”. The foundation of these social friendships is built on a type of “web trust”, as group members gain popularity by expanding on, debating, support and providing contributions to current topics. And because group members may belong to and hold similar discussions within multiple groups and networks, the viral growth of a topic (or product or company) becomes explosive.

Social Marketing: Out With the Old, In With the New
With social sites doing the marketing, the days of soft selling are out and social marketing is in. Consumers have spoken, and no one wants to hear from strangers about a product or service, or how a company can change the world with its new, revolutionary idea, or how much lower and better a price or product is. When generated by members of the social media websites, your message changes from marketing noise into a viral, marketing “buzz”.

A Few Tools of Social Marketing: Blogs, Tags and Sharing
Blogs, short for weblogs, are online commentaries and journals of free speech. Blogs have been very popular over the last few years, especially in the political and high-tech arena. Today’s companies use them to discuss relevant topics, promote and review their products and to answer questions posed by consumers. Loved by search engines, linked to by other websites and read by faithful followers, blogs are becoming even more popular as an online marketing tool.

And with blogs, come tags – the author’s labeling of a blog post (or any web page) with relevant keywords (tags) to help those searching find the page. Used with blog indexing systems like Technorati, tags are an alternative traffic generator bringing in both traffic and inbound links to tagged pages.

Once a blog entry has been tagged, others looking for topics related to the tagged keywords will be lead to click through. If a visitor finds thinks the information in the blog entry needs to be shared, tools like those provided by Stumbleupon, Digg, and Del.icio.us provide ways to tell others of the new find. As more people “stumble upon”, “digg” or find the entry to be “del.icio.us” the more likely the blog will enter into the world of mega-social medias like Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. where it’s popularity will continue to grow.

Conclusion
Social marketing is fast becoming an inexpensive way to gain visibility, build a network of followers and to get the word out on products, services and expertise. When used properly, social marketing’s very nature will create a wealth of inbound links, increase visibility and promote the Internet buzz for a company or organization. The realized effects tend to be an increase in search engine rank, brand trust and the power to influence others online.

With social marketing, hard sells become obsolete and softsells are seen as welcomed suggestions; visitors become advocates, and supporters become your sales teams. It’s becoming the most efficient and effective way to harness the power of the web.

Build Traffic With StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a social media marketing website, with more than 8.7 million users (as of Dec. 2009) discovering new sites, videos, photos and more. Joining the community is simple: just register on the website, and then download and install the StumbleUpon toolbar. Once registered, you can look through all the interesting websites and content pieces others have found. Or, find new pages on your own. Then, click on the StumbleUpon toolbar’s “I like it!” icon, and add it to the database.

You can even vote for your own websites and webpages, but don’t go overboard. Since StumbleUpon is a social community, shameless promoters aren’t welcomed. Make sure you have more than just your own websites in your profile – your links should be one of many you’ve stumbled upon. Giving back by finding websites and content pieces beyond your own makes you a contributor – not a user. Here’s another tip: write up reviews for other websites you like, resisting the temptation to review your own website. Reviews are scarce, yet they carry a lot of respect.

Traffic may trickle in or, depending on the value others place on your content, come in great numbers. Since other registered users can select topics they’re interested in, your page(s) may be seen very quickly. The best ways to use StumbleUpon are contributing to the community, and voting on new and interesting things regularly. Don’t over-promote. If your content is good, you will get traffic to your website.