The Beginner's Guide to Using Social Media for Marketing

by thekenyeung

The Beginner's Guide to Using Social Media for Marketing

Have you been hearing a lot of talk about social media and want to learn more about it? If you've looked at the results other businesses have been getting, you know using social media for marketing makes sense. But where do you start?

There are so many different sites and strategies available. How do you figure out which one is viable for your business and what actions do you need in order to start using social media for marketing? Here is a beginner's guide you can follow:

Step 1: Start With Your Blog and Optimize It

If you don't have a blog up already then you need to set one up right now. Blogging is very important as many people actually prefer to read blogs rather than email newsletters. Some people go as far as reading blogs exclusively and using email for personal uses.

Start blogging about topics related to your market and present value to your readers. You will start getting more subscribers through word of mouth and search engine traffic if your content is good and your site is properly optimized.

There are other things you can do to increase visibility and get more out of your blog. You should allow people to bookmark your posts to social bookmarking sites, share your content on social networking sites, and subscribe to your RSS feed for updates.

Step 2: Get on Facebook and Twitter

On your blog and site you should give people the ability to subscribe to your Facebook and Twitter page as well. Some people spend a lot of time on these social networking sites and prefer to receive updates through them.

Create an account, customize it, and make sure you let your blog readers and email subscribers know that they can get updates through these sources. These sites will also help you get more customers as your name spreads.

The whole idea behind social networking sites is to let people interact with each other and share with each other. If one of your readers happens to like your business, they can send out your notice to hundreds of potential contacts and their contacts can do the same, resulting in a natural viral marketing effect.

Step 3: Get Creative with Your Content

Don't limit your content to just simple blog posts. You can do many things from putting up videos on YouTube (another great social media site), listing photos on Flickr, make podcasts for regular readers of your blog, and set up audio events.

Using social media for marketing means you should go multimedia if you want to get as much exposure as possible. There are many marketers that have had success with video blogs and their YouTube channels. This makes your content more interesting and gets people to pay attention.

To conclude, follow the steps outlined in this article to get started using social media for marketing. There are many other strategies, tricks, and tactics but these are the best way to get started and gain a solid footing in the area of social media. Just focus on making small improvements, adding new touches regularly until it your efforts begin to gain ground and you can see the payoff clearly.

The Beginner's Guide to Using Social Media for Marketing