Social Networking for Marketing?

At one time not so long ago, it used to be that the only reliable way to find information online was to use a search engine.

However, with the advent of what is called Web 2.0 (interactive, dynamic websites that promote or operate as social networks), people can easily find information and websites that other human beings recommend. Recommendations are very powerful on the web and is a big component of social networking.

The most popular instance of this is social networking phenomena is social bookmarking. Websites such as Del.icio.us, Digg, and Stumbleupon allow users to share their personal favorites (bookmarks) with others, Stumbleupon encourages site reviews as well. Users tag each bookmarked site with the keywords they feel are most applicable, by using a bookmarking site it’s easy to zero in on authorative and trusted sites.

Instead of using a search engine to find information, people can search tags that will display all websites bookmarked with that specific tag, a human edited directory. This amounts to a human referral system or vote based rank for sites and its relevance to subject being searched.

Other versions of social networking include blog based social networks, most popular being Technorati.com. Technorati indexes blogs based on the amount of incoming links those blogs have, as well as the tags associated with their posts.

One of the most popular social networks is MySpace, with Facebook trailing right behind. Though the social giant enjoys over 20 million unique visitors every month, few businesses or website owners have thought to penetrate this incredible resource.

Lastly, there is a powerful new social media networks that has emerged that is revolutionizing video sharing: it is YouTube. These mega network allows citizen filmmakers and broadcasters to share their visions with the world and spread their word about what matters to them. This has leveled the playing field for anyone to have a TV show, Commercial and voice on the web.

Very few businesses have realized this yet, but this media network has potential goldmines stock full of future Speilbergs, Bloombergs, and Oprahs, any broadcaster can create a video based marketing message.

Can Social Networking Help My Site Traffic Grow?

Two out of three people online in June 2007 visited a social networking site. In fact, 1 out of every 20 website visits is to a social networking website. Experts say that social networks are starting to eclipse traffic from the major search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.

In 2007 Myspace closely matched the volume of traffic that Google experiences on a daily basis, now Facebook is coming up as the new contender.

So if your company is not present on any of the major social networks, you're missing out on the easiest, fastest way to access a massive portion of internet users.

How Can I Get Involved in Social Networking?

Working with social networking sites is very similar to working with the media. Give them a juicy story, a secret, a little known tip, or resource that they can sink their teeth into and you’ll have an army of talkers spreading the word about you, your site and your business.

All of this translates into referral traffic, which convert into sales on an average of 667% better than cold prospects resulting from search engine results. So even if you reach less people through social networking, your conversions will be far higher, these implications are enormous.

We practice targeting various social networks through a variety of methods:

Article or Blog Promotion

We manage blogs for our various clients (as well as article updates) that contain posts written purely to capture the imagination and interest of our client’s niche target market.

For instance, if you sell nutritional products, gifts, and items, we will develop a series of blog posts and / or articles that discuss controversial aspects or “hot off the press” type topic that health oriented readers either find highly valuable as an information resource, or highly intriguing or emotionally stimulating.

We then promote the article to various social bookmarking and blogging networks which then circulate your story and generate traffic back to your website.

Social Promotion

Particularly effective for clients who target young adults, musicians, or other highly active social groups, we implement social promotion campaigns on networks like MySpace, FaceBook, Kajiji and CraigsList to spread the word about your business. This of course is dependent on your particular niche.

Depending on your niche, even if your business does not target the “myspace crowd,” we can almost always devise a creative campaign to get the net and the blogshpere buzzing about your products or services.

How Does Social Networking Work With SEO?

As internet users begin to use tags to find information (a tag is a keyword that a human associated with a website, vs. a keyword that a search engine attributes to a website), A good Search Marketing professionals cannot ignore the growing dominance of the social networks.

We view the partnership between social networks and search engines as an excellent and balanced marriage. Of course, social networking gets you in front of people who no longer use search engines in lieu of finding their information through referrals or bookmarks and tags.

But the added, and perhaps more exciting bonus, is that while you grow in popularity with social networks such as Technorati, Digg and MySpace, your search rankings will continue to increase as a result!

Your popularity will tell Google that you are an authority in your particular niche market according to your human peers who review and bookmark your site and pages.