SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

The Internet is not just about looking for information anymore, it's about sharing, networking and entertaining.

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There are millions of users worldwide using all kinds of community websites to discuss and share videos, photos and have fun. These community websites are examples of Social Media.

Here is a list of a few Social Media sites to give you an idea of what we are talking about:

  • Facebook is used to in touch with friends and family all over the world. You have an own profile page, where you can introduce yourself and you can download photos and videos. Facebook has 140 million users in 20 different languages
  • MySpace is also a social networking website. This is a website to have fun, share music videos and communicate with friends
  • YouTube is used for sharing videos. Every day, there are 65,000 new videos downloaded on YouTube.
  • Flickr is used for publishing and sharing photos.
  • Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates. The posts are short: up to 140 characters in length — that's all you have and need on twitter.
  • Blogger is another hub to have a blog and link to other blogs
  • Technorati is a search engine for blogs
  • Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website where you can bookmark your favourites and recommend other websites

We could name many more, but we think you get the point...

So how is Social Media connected with Marketing?

As you can see, there is a lot of traffic on these websites: Flickr has 5,000 clicks per minute. Del.icio.us has 150 million websites bookmarked. MySpace had its best year in 2006 when they attracted 230,000 new users per day…

Because Social Media sites are all about sharing, recommending, and networking, you can see the potential in getting links and traffic.

If you show up in a blog like Twitter or Facebook with your business and you give the users high quality information, you become a part of that community. These groups have strict rules, so NEVER make cheap advertising on these blogs. If you want to be successful there, be an honest person and talk to people about what they are really interested in. If you do this, you will be rewarded with a lot of links and an increase in traffic.