In our last post of The Ultimate Checklist series, we talked about the basics of how to market your website by establishing a web presence either organically (no fees paid) and/or using the most popular paid methods PPC and paid advertising services. Today we discuss how and why to integrate social media into your marketing strategy.
Why Use Social Media to Establish Your Web Presence
The definition of social media describes its use as a method to obtain personal contacts, develop links, gain exposure and to promote your product or service. Social media websites enable this because they allow users to share information with each other such as blogs, documents, videos, pictures, articles, product or service updates as well as personal or business profiles.
A website using a blog can will increase its Internet traffic by 55% and can expect the number of inbound links to increase by approximately 100% (Hubspot). This impact is magnified by 2-10 times when the proper use of social media is applied. We say proper use because not all social media is created equal and success is very dependent on how you are trying to accomplish your goals. Your social media strategy should be planned just like all your marketing efforts with the most attention going to the social media outlet that can provide the greatest return on effort (ROE)
How and Which Social Media Entrepreneurs Can Use to Establish a Web Presence
How and which social media to use to maximize SEO for marketing is dependent on:
- Type of web presence website you have.
- Who your target market is and what do they read.
- How much time you have per month to market and track results for social media.
- How much money you want to spend on outsourcing social media marketing per month.
The good news is entrepreneurs, professional practice managers and innovators have a lot of social media outlets to choose from. As reminder, make sure you have checked with Knowem LLC to check the availability of social media profile names. The major types of social media include:
List of Social Media Categories for Entrepreneurs
We have added article sharing, document sharing and profile sites to the original list featured on Social Name Check Tool From The Entrepreneurs Advisor®
- Article sharing: ezine, goarticles, buzzle, A1articles …
- Blogging: blogger, issuu, tumblr ….
- Bookmarking: delicious, faves, amplify, diigo, buzz yahoo, google buzz ….
- Business: docstop, spoke, linkedin ….
- Communities: facebook, slideshare, knowem ….
- Design: artlog, deviantart, aviary ….
- Document sharing: scribd, docstop, slideshare
- Entertainment: blippr, redroom, sportsmates ….
- Health: myfitnesspal, armchairgm, foodical ….
- Information: yahoo, wikimedia, ….
- Microblogging: plurk, adocu, twitter ….
- Music: ilike, soundcloud, redwire ….
- News:technorati, techcrunch, digg ….
- Photo: picassa, flickr, twitxr ….
- Profile sites: squidoo, gather, hubpages, innovatrs …
- Tech: slashdot, tinyurl, filecabin ….
- Travel: qype, sharetrip, dopplr ….
- Video: hulu, youtube, livevideo ….
As you can see there are many social media categories. The key is choosing the social media that will attract the most potential clients, customers or investors to your website. Currently, the most popular for ecommerce is Facebook, for professionals the most popular is LinkedIn. The most popular does not mean the most effective. If you can identify a particular niche social media site you may have greater success. There is a great deal of trial and error with social media as it is still a marketing vehicle under development.
The strategy a business venture uses should be part of the overall marketing plan. You should have at a minimum:
- Definitive and measurable goals
- Enough resources to accomplish goals
- A plan of action
Should You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing?
The decision to do your own social media marketing or outsource it is simple a question of time and resources. Social media marketing can be a time consuming processes for a new venture or professional practice. It takes time to log onto each site, code and post your content, material or advertisement and then track the results. It can be boring and tedious work even if you have the mechanics down to just a few hours per month.
On the other hand, the work is simple enough to outsource or hire a person and be relatively sure they can do the work properly. The question often asked is “Do I need to hire a consultant or company to setup and conduct my social media campaign?” The answer truly is only if you have cash flow to spare and have confidence that the person/company you outsource the work to knows what they are doing.
If you are not sure of the time needed to perform all the tasks associated with establishing a web presence the following example may help. It is a breakdown of the time it takes me to write an SEO maximized blog and then promote it via social media. The numbers are an average and will vary depending on the amount of coding and links that are set up.
Time to write, code and promote a blog
- Time to create a 800 – 1200 word blog: 1 hour research, 2-4 hours writing
- Time to code (Links, SEO maximization etc..) a 800 – 1200 word blog: 1-2 hours
- Time to post and promote on 1 dozen social media sites: 1 hour
As you can see the total time it takes to produce an average SEO maximized blog takes me approximately 6-8 hours. However, the amount of time spent using social media is just a fraction of that total time. The Entrepreneur’s Advisor® recommends that you do your own social media marketing and engage the services of a social media consultant only if you are having trouble identifying the proper social media outlets to use (strategy).
The next article in this series will cover analytics and how to measure SEO success.
Share with us the social media strategies you use or social media sites that you have found to be effective.
Articles in The Ultimate Checklist for Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Micro-enterprises so far are:
- The Ultimate Checklist For Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Micro-enterprises
- Choosing Your New Venture Legal Entity
- Choosing Names for New Ventures, Domains and Social Media
- How Entrepreneurs Can Determine Their Web Presence Needs
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | Choosing What To Do With Your Website
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | How to Determine Your Keywords
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | Creating Keywords
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | Understanding Sales Metrics
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | Learning the Basics of SEO
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | SEO Basics of Writing Calendars
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | SEO Basics of RSS Feeds and Directories
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | SEO Virtual Reality: Linkwheels
- The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | SEO Basics of Marketing Your Website
GUIDELINES FOR GUEST BLOGGING
The Entrepreneur’s Advisor is happy to accept guest blogs from our contacts, clients and related professionals in an effort to help companies us all generate leads, links and promote products and services. To help facilitate this process, the following guidelines have been established for guest bloggers.
Guest responsibilities:
• All content must be original (not published elsewhere).
• Content must be related to Entrepreneurs, Innovators or Micro-enterprises.
• Limited self promotion. The object of The Entrepreneur’s Advisor is to be a free resource for our readers.
• May have up to one link per 250 words.
• Posts should be between 750 and 1200 words.
• Grammar and spell checked before submission.
• Submitted via either HTML format or Word DOC.
The Entrepreneur’s Advisor Responsibilities:
• Add author byline and introductory paragraph.
• Review/edit for continuity.
Joint Responsibilities:
• Promote via social media such as Digg, Twitter, Buzz Yahoo, Stumbleupon etc.
The Entrepreneur’s Advisor® contact information:
Stuart Smith (Content management)
contact@blog.theentrepreneursadvisor.com