Facebook | Social Media DJ

Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

How To Connect With Your Customers Via Social Media

February 23rd, 2010

The development of new online destinations for information sharing and interactive communication by and between family and friends as well as professional associates is consistently cited as the driving force behind Web 2.0. Termed “Social Media”, the trend has created abundant opportunities to distribute high quality health and disease education content, while creating community and entirely new opportunities for collaboration between your business and it’s customers. The Social Media Mogul blog is dedicated to sharing those ideas with you.

One of the web’s most recognized information sources, Wikipedia, defines “Social media marketing” as a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube as well as many independent subject matter blogs. In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees).

MOST ACTIVE SOCIAL NETWORKS

FACEBOOK – As the largest and most successful social networking media site in operation today. Facebook has 300 Million users worldwide and continues to grow and add new members at an impressive rate. Members interact with one another by providing updates to their personalized pages which may include photos, videos, links to other sites, or “microblog” type status updates that let’s friends and colleagues know what you are up to.

TWITTER – Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.

YOU-TUBE – YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, UMG and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Alexa ranks You-Tube as the fourth most visited site on the web.

However, to capitalize on this emerging trend, your business needs to develop a comprehensive Social Media Marketing strategy. By developing and implementing a carefully planned social media strategy, you can take advantage of current media trends, to accomplish multiple objectives including broadening the reach of your brand and providing an interactive platform for communication with and between your business and your customers. My friend David Hindie has created a super easy to use, step by step video course for using Facebook to market your business, titled, “Social Media Marketing”. I refer to it often and would highly recommend it.

As with all things web, things change rapidly and having and maintaining active Social Media Marketing strategy takes work and cooperative effort from multiple areas of the your organization including management, operations, and communications. Through minimal effort you can yield extraordinary results and form an effective plan for increasing site traffic and brand awareness for your business

Development of the your business’s Social Media strategy is suggested as the first step in defining an online media plan to boost your online marketing efforts. While social networking sites offer access to millions of targeted individuals, it should be viewed as a tool for driving traffic to corporate owned sites such as .ORG and .COM where similar features could be incorporated and where you can guide the visitor experience in a way that creates a deeper more meaningful engagement between your business and the customers.

About the Author

About the Author: Hector V. Herrera is a recognized marketing strategist and award winning producer of film, television and web based marketing projects. He is co-creator of Real Savvy Moms, a long running PBS Television series. He has worked hands on with many of the world’s top consumer brands such as Coca-Cola, Nestle, Schering Plough and More. He is a brand visionary and a driving force behind the Guerilla Media Mogul and Social Media Mogul, both online business information brands.

For more information visit… Social Media Mogul and Guerllia Media Mogul

(ArticlesBase SC #1896179)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – How To Connect With Your Customers Via Social Media

Technorati Tags: connect, social media, customers

Posted in Business, Facebook, Tools, Twitter

2 Comments »

Use the Power of Social Media Promotion to Supercharge your Traffic

February 17th, 2010

By: Casey Markee

We all know how important it is to have a content-rich website. Promoting these sites across the internet has in the past involved everything from search engine optimization to paid keyword referrals to link popularity campaigns. However, one of the most effective and relatively new methods to promote content-rich web sites these days, is through social media promotion.

What is “social media promotion” you ask? Simply, as defined by Wikipedia, social media:

“describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.”

Part of the Web 2.0 revolution; another catchphrase describing the new generation of web sites that have users that submit their own text, video and picture content; social media promotion can take many forms.

Usually, these technologies and practices take non-search engine forms and can involve such technologies as chat forums, message boards, blogs, podcasts, and wikis. Simply, social media can be considered ANYTHING that you can use to build a community to rally around. A well-run social media campaign can drive huge amounts of traffic to a website and can determine whether a new idea, website or startup ultimately takes off or not.

There are literally dozens of social media sites active across the internet today. Below are brief overviews of what I would consider the five most popular:

Digg (http://www.digg.com) the big boy of social media sites. Digg was formed initially with a tech focus and is still the end all for all tech or computer specific content items that you wish to pull across to the masses. Digg has however become so popular that its scope has now expanded to cover most any item of interest.

del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) a close second to Digg in the area of backlink generation. The primary purpose of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online; in that regard, it’s actually more community-focused then Digg. The ability to store your bookmarks online and add more from anyplace in the world, actually encourages cross-linking among site members who share similar interests. This in turn allows you to promote your own content to a shared community with similar interests, generating those much needed backlinks for site promotional purposes.

Technorati (http://www.technorati.com) the recognized authority on what is going in the world of weblogs. The main strength of Technocrati is the ability to keep tabs on your online visibility. The site allows you to keep tabs on who is linking to you, where you are being mentioned online, what kind of progress your site is making, and how your competitors are doing in comparison. The site can be indispensible if you routinely visit a lot of blogs and want to be updated on them when their content changes.

Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) online only since 2001, Wikipedia is now the world’s largest reference website on the planet. The content of Wikipedia is free and collaboratively written by people all around the world. This site is so popular that a search of most terms will display a Top 5 Wikipedia result in Google. It is worth noting that if your website is not already one of the strongest entries on the web, a listing on Wikipedia could actually “outrank” your own website. Therefore, make sure this result is actually truthful and complimentary, whenever possible.

Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) primarily driven by young adults, this social media site now numbers over nine million users and is still growing. Facebook helps you keep tabs on member profiles, at least those you can access. Recent changes to the site have made it very marketing friendly and a must-use if you have a college friendly product you wish to publicize. Members can purchase “facebook flyers,” which starting at $5, can be displayed 10,000 times a pop. Pricing increases based on frequency and number of days shown. Facebook groups are also very popular and very loyal, find something that connects with your group or the site and the results can be highly viral.

Getting your content noticed on these sites isn’t easy, but there are ways to prepare your content in such a way as to be considered “social media optimized.” This SMO approach is becoming a new concentration area for current SEO firms and can involve any of dozens of different approaches.

Here are five effective SMO rules that you can implement immediately when preparing your content for future social media campaigns:

Make your site linkable – also known as increasing your linkability, make it easy for outside parties and social media sites to link to your content. This can be done in a variety of ways, the easiest being to establish a blog on your site. If blogs aren’t your thing, maintaining free white papers, content-rich articles and resource pages that contain lots of useful links in one place, are great ways of increasing the linkable nature of your website.

Make bookmarking or social tagging easy – adding bookmarking buttons has been around for awhile. Go beyond this, though, by including a “delicious this” text link at the bottom of a post, and a Digg button near the top of the article. This format has been shown to be the most effective for generating votes for your content.

Start participating today – join the conversation on your site or in your site niche today. Start blogging on your own or make it a point to visit leading forums that target your audience and join the discussion . Answer some questions, provide some needed advice, and drop some “buzz” about your site at the same time; you won’t be sorry.

Reward helpful users – helpful or valuable users to your site that contribute noticeably to the site’s content and audience should be recognized and rewarded. This can take the form of a simple PM thank-you or a note on the forums themselves. The result of this is two-fold: you keep these valuable community members on your site, and you gain vocal champions of your site to outside members and sites they in turn visit.

Reward inbound site links – obviously the more inbound links your blog and site can generate, the better. This is still the singular method by which a site rises in the search rankings. Reward linking sites by providing them a permalink to use and listing them on your site in return. This simple act of acknowledgement provides the return gift of visibility and is never a bad thing.

The role of social media promotion to drive content is a continually expanding field. Even an examination of the main sites referenced above doesn’t begin to cover the viral social content impact of such popular social media mechanisms as YouTube videos or Flickr photo slides and galleries.

If planned and implemented correctly, social media promotion can be invaluable. The site visitor is in command, so why not start building a relationship with them, even if it’s on their terms?

Author Resource:-> Casey Markee is president of San Diego SEO firm Media Wyse. He has over 8 yrs. of experience within the online marketing arena and holds graduate degrees in Marketing & E-Commerce. Contact him today at http://www.MediaWyse.com with your SEO questions or assistance on your upcoming campaign.

Article From Article Directory Technorati Tags: Social Media, Promotion, Traffic

Posted in Blog, Business, Facebook, Google Buzz, Headline, Tools

10 Comments »

Google Buzz

February 15th, 2010

Google Buzz

By Osa Collins

It really did come as a surprise to me. I don’t know about you but when I launched my Gmail the other day, I saw the question: “Want to try Buzz?” OK. It might not have been in those exact same words but really something in that line. It gave me an option to launch my Gmail with Buzz or without it.

Of course, being a tech-voracious human being, I promptly agreed to try it out. So here I am writing about my short experience and observation and questions…what more, even the opinions of others who have gone on before me.

Google rocks! No doubt. When it took the world by storm in revolutionizing search on the internet, people could not understand how they got by without it. Now the word “Google” is both a verb and a noun. After that they have launched series of ground breaking apps including the famous Google maps, Google desktop, Gmail and several others too numerous and unknown or both to mention.

This latest foray into the world of social network in the name of Buzz is not even novel for Google haven tried the waters before in Orkut, and one they abandoned in some years ago, Jaiku. However, this latest effort is new being that they came up with what I think is a brilliant idea which is to tie their version of Facebook into their Gmail. If adopted by all their gmail subscribers, it will give them a head start of 150 million users.

But is that possible? With the present state of things in the social network market, people have become so used to Facebook and are unlikely to become “unused” to it (heck, Facebook keeps working at their own!). I understand why Google would want a share of the social buzz but can they really catch on? Advertisers go where the crowd is and as people spend more time on these sites, these money bags will eventually drift there. But does that threaten Google’s money machine? Will they loose any momentum by sticking with the modus operandi instead of diving into this already cluttered area?

These and other unmentioned but equally strong questions remain to be answered. And I think only time will tell if Google is making a good deal with this latest move.

Osa Collins is a 27 year old technology watcher and commentator. He shares some of his thoughts on different new innovations on http://technewspace.blogspot.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Osa_Collins

http://EzineArticles.com/?Google-Buzz&id=3747501

Technorati Tags: google buzz, social network, social buzz, famous google maps, facebook, twitter

Posted in Business, Facebook, Google Buzz, Headline, Tools, Twitter

Tags: Google Buzz

No Comments »

Web 2 Expo 2009 Chris Brogan keynote

January 2nd, 2010

Technorati Tags: Chris Brogan, keynote, 2009

Posted in Blog, Facebook, Twitter

2 Comments »

Google search changes not small News~

December 9th, 2009

After reading this post by Jennifer Van Grove I had to post it here for all you awesome readers! Check it out and then read the rest at http://ow.ly/Ksgb

The New Social Google: What it Means for SMBs

Oct 30, 2009 –

On Wednesday, October 21, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Google’s Vice President of Search,Marissa Mayer, made two important announcements regarding search.

The first big piece of news is that Google will integrate real-time Twitter search into search results. The second ground-breaking tidbit is that the search giant will be unveiling Google Social Search in just a few weeks.

These aren’t your everyday announcements. Both have major implications for social brands and present huge opportunities for small businesses. Let’s take a look at why.

Tweets Matter

Twitter search tools have always been important resources for finding out what people are saying right now on any given subject matter, product, service, or brand. But tweets have been largely irrelevant to online users not using Twitter. That’s about to change forever, as both Google and Bing have announced integrated real-time Twitter search. Bing’s product is a separate webpage, but Google confirmed that their offering will include tweets integrated into standard search results.

Essentially this means that tweets matter more than ever, because they will be exposed to mainstream searchers. All the good, bad, and ugly things ever said about your small business or your competitors are now ripe for perusing by the common web searcher. Having a social presence, especially on Twitter, is now mandatory.

Say, for instance, you have a disgruntled customer who decides to tweet their frustration. Somewhere else in the world another individual is searching Google for a service provider in your industry, but their search returns the aforementioned negative tweet, replies, and retweets. You’ve now lost that sale. The situation is exacerbated if the Twitterer in question happens to be highly influential.

But, should you be using Twitter for your SMB, see the negative tweets pop up, and engage with the naysayers to try and remedy the situation, your customer service tweets will also become a part of the search experience. Since it’s a real-time integration, your tweets are actually much more likely to catch the eye of a searcher over the older tweets from the disgruntled customer. you can actively change the real-time dialogue about your business.

Customers Rule Search

Google Social Search is equally just as important to understand if you’re an SMB. The basic idea is that when you search, you’ll now be able to see contextual and relevant search results from your friend connections on the social networks you’ve added to your Google Profile. While Social Search will be launched as a Google Lab feature, and will be entirely opt-in, it’s likely to become one of the most popular extras ever introduced by Google.

I use Google for everything, for quick spell checks, finding restaurants in my immediate city, geeky …. Make sure to read the rest http://ow.ly/Ksgb!

Technorati Tags: twitter, google, mashable, search