Why and How to Use Social Media Optimization for Business Promotion

Online Trends:

Online competition is reaching greater heights in recent years and with current economic trends the situation has got even harder to manage for online firms. The importance of internet marketing has increased with such trends and to make things easy, there are different online promotional methods to choose from strategies such SEO, SMO and SEM are the most preferred. Among these SEO is famous for being the most cost-effective and highly targeted traffic method, while SEM is a perfect choice for short term business products, services and offers.

But SMO has always been the forgotten strategy, but in reality it is as equal and effective as other internet marketing methods and to be honest for some business social media optimization is much better and effective than others. This article covers how and why you should SMO for business.

Why and what makes SMO important?How to use SMO effectively?

If we can get the perfect answer for these 2 questions then it gets quite clear that SMO is much more important that we think. So let's waste no time and get to business...

Why and What Makes SMO Important?

The simplest concept of Marketing is "where ever people go you must follow" and it's true, for it makes sense to market your business and products where your potential clients are waiting and watching. Social websites generate immense amount of traffic, for instance there are more than 955 million active users in Facebook as of June 2012(Courtesy Wikipedia). And among those 955 million are your potential clients, and this is a tempting option for both small and corporate business firms to market their brands, products and Services. Apart from lead generation social media presence is also a valuable factor in you SEO campaign and SMO actually helps improve Search Engine rankings.

How to use SMO effectively?

Unlike any other marketing strategies SMO is a regular work, which means your social media campaign should actively interact with as many users as possible in order to get the most of it. Major SMO experts also recommend using graphics to get a better reach on SMO sites as people love to comment, like and share pictures and videos. Experts say a "picture can convey 1000 words" while a video can double that effect and so try using graphics to improve results and increase lead generation and interaction. Keep your page lively and active as people never prefer to follow an empty page, share your activities regularly, just anything presented lively will do. Tell your clients and followers about new offers and new products or share with the about achievements and milestones reached. Remember, advertising too much or being overly promotional will not go well with your audience so give them some fun and pleasure while occasionally promoting your brand or services.

If done correctly SMO will produce far better results than SEO for certain business and products. But always remember one important point, "yes you are there for business, but sharing and speaking of your business and products alone will never work".

Gybatech offers SMO services in India at affordable and cost-effective rates. http://www.gybatech.com/ also offers SEO and SEM solutions to clients in India, UK and USA.

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Using Social Media To Promote Start-Up Businesses

If you are planning to launch a start- up business or have recently started one, you probably have encountered a wealth of information on using social media to promote a business. Though there are millions of social media users across the world, around 900 million of them, it is easy to get carried away by the numbers. Finding the right social sites to promote your business to maximise its potential is essential for business success, and this is where you should concentrate your efforts.

What Social Media Engagement Achieves For Business

Social media in essence is about engagement through sharing, which for business means targeting your product range, your articles, or your services at engaging a potential customer or client base. Collectively, products, services and articles are known as content, and it is through offering quality content that success through your channels can be achieved. Social media has around 900 million users globally, and covers every topic range you can think of. As well as engaging a potential customer and client base or readership, social media is also relevant to search engine optimization. Social media is a unique format as it helps you promote your content directly to your audience, and in turn it generates traffic via people sharing your content with others, and through SEO. Perhaps more importantly than this, however, social media with its online reviews helps a business build trust, and nearly every brand you can think of uses social media for this reason. Consider this: you come across two companies offering the same services; one has 250 Facebook likes, the other 43 - which one would you opt for? So regardless of whether you're an online retailer, an affiliate marketer, offer a service such as tuition, or run a news site, social media can help you build your business online. Google estimates that by 2015, UK consumers will have purchased £40bn of products and services online.

Popular Social Media Sites And Their Uses

Getting to get grips with the nuances of social media's role in promoting your business can cause more than its fair share of headaches. Here is a list of the most popular social media sites and their uses:

Facebook is predominately for sharing. This can be products, articles, or services. In a nutshell, it's for sharing your content with as many people as possible.
Twitter is about sharing news on any subject. Don't let the word news make you feel it does not apply for products. New product launches, new stock ready to be sold - Twitter is good for all of this.
Google+ is in part a combination of the two and has become important for search engine optimization if nothing else.
Blogging is a great way to impart news and expertise to your readership, customer and client base, or followers. It offers a good way to attract visitors on your site via search engines.
YouTube is about showcasing videos to a wide audience. It is being utilised by businesses all the time to sell products and services. As YouTube is owned by Google, videos tend to feature prominently on search engine results. You can also utilise the YouTube ads to make a secondary income stream.
Pinterest and other bookmarking sites are very good at showcasing visual products. If your business is selling something online, albeit a product or service, ensure you are posting on Pinterest and as many bookmarking sites you can find.

Social Media And Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Good positioning on search engines is about unique quality content that is well shared and well linked to from other websites. By sharing your content on social sites, the more chance there is of people liking it on Facebook, retweeting on Twitter, or sharing the pin on Pinterest. Links are important for good SEO and posting your content on social sites provides a link from the social site to yours, and in every case this can be targeted to a specific web page. By web page I mean a specific product, service, or article. This also ensures Google indexes the web page. That is to say, it adds it to its database, ensuring it can be found on search engines.

Finding The Best Social Media Sites For Your Business

To find the best social sites suited to your business, think about what your business is trying to do. If your business sells products or services, then use social sites that showcase pictures and videos to sell the product. YouTube, Pinterest, Delicious and Instagram are all really good for showcasing products. If you're in the selling game, make videos of your products, take good professional photos and get them on these sites, and ensure you link the pictures and videos directly to the content on your site. If you sell on eBay or an affiliate seller, try to link directly to the product page where a potential customer can buy it. Also, put the products on your Facebook page, Google+ page, and Twitter. For service providers, a slightly different spin on social media promotion is needed as, more often than not, a service provider will sit in the middle of visual social media, and text-based social sites. This also applies to affiliate marketers. If you can, represent your services with a picture or icon, and publish the picture or icon on the visual sites. Use videos to showcase your services - if you can get testimonials from clients, well, that's gold dust. Publish regularly on your blog and tweet the articles, together with insights into the industry. This engagement will help build trust with your existing clients, showcase your skills, and help you to be found by people wishing to become new clients.

Social Media Advertising

If you have the budget for it, Facebook offers advertising on a click-through basis like Google AdSense, or it can be used to earn likes. It is often a case of experimentation. For affiliate marketing revenue streams, click-throughs will expose the user to your revenue stream, while a like will ensure every time an article or new product is published they'll be informed. It's trial and error and seems to work well for some businesses, but others have lost faith in it.

Saving Time

By now, you have probably guessed that updating social sites, especially if you publish a lot of daily content, is hard work. Larger businesses employ people to keep on top of it, something many start-up business don't have the budget or the time for. It is possible to automate your social accounts updating using automatic syndication sites.

A Social Media Strategy

Step 1: Create a Facebook Page, Twitter account and Google+ Page For Business

These have their uses regardless of the type of business, and all help considerably with SEO. Ensure you create business pages on Facebook and Google+. This keeps your personal details and indeed social media life hidden from your customers or clients, and it offers better options to promote a business.

Step 2: Identify Social Media Sites That Are The Most Important To Your Business

If your site sells products, make a list of all the online bookmarking and video sites you can find and create accounts. Ensure you use Pinterest and YouTube. If your business is for services, information, or is for an affiliate marketing revenue stream, you want to spread the word in as many ways as possible. Use blogging sites such as Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress.org to syndicate your blog posts and services, and try to create news content if you provide services to show your expertise in your field.

Step 3: Use Social Media Tools Such As 'If This Then That'

'If this then that' or ifttt.com automatically updates your social accounts. This is easy to establish and works by syndicating the information across a host of social sites automatically as soon as one site is updated. This, as you can imagine, saves a lot of time. Be cautions, however, and ensure social sites suited to the business, such as bookmarking sites for online retailers, appear just as you want them to be found. Automatic syndication has limitations and often links and pictures do not appear as you would like them to. Nonetheless, and especially for syndicating blog posts via an RSS feed, it is a very good time-saver for promoting your business via social media. Not all social media can be syndicated in this way, but the sites that ifttt.com syndicates to are well worth creating accounts on to promote your business. The more social media sites you post on, the better.

Step 4: Use #hashtags

Whenever you post your content, ensure you use accurate #hashtags. This will help users find your content when they search for it. So if I'm selling tyres on ebay, #tyres, #cartyres, #car, #tyres is good, and for sports news, #sportsnews, #football #cricket, and so on is good.

Step 5: Once It Starts

Once your content starts hitting the social media world, monitor your accounts for feedback. Concentrate on the sites you've identified as important to your business and respond to questions and comments. When responding, try to be helpful and non-abusive, even if the commentator is not pleasant. Professionalism goes along way.

Step 6: Participation

Twitter and Google+ show trending topics and these are popular subjects people are discussing. It is worth performing the odd Twitter search to see what people are talking about in relation to your business, and making a contribution to the discussion. This is a good way to make connections and hopefully achieve more success.

Step 7: Monitoring Success

Monitoring success has proven to be quite difficult for social media. Unlike SEO results, which can be measured on click-throughs and content engagement, it is not so simple on social sites for a variety of reasons. You may feel if you provide news that 10 comments on one story is a good sign of success, while 100 likes of a product video on YouTube with no obvious link to sales may not be immediately obvious as positive. It is worth remembering, however, that though people may not directly access your main site via social sites, it may prompt them to return later. Always keep in mind that social media is for sharing content, so any like, comment or retweet is positive.

Visit HomeforBusiness for more online marketing tips.

Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother of three, PR Consultant and Entrepreneur

Like many women on most days I seem to have to juggle all my roles. On other days just three or four. This is why I founded Homeforbusiness. I recognise what it takes to be a working Mum and how to set up an online business from home with all 'pulls' of everyday family life and work.

I have always been entrepreneurial and set up by first corporate communications company, EMA Productions, in my 30s working with big corporate clients such as Texaco, Rank and Boots. Whilst it was challenging and hard work, it was quickly successful. I could focus solely on winning contracts and meeting the clients needs without family distractions and with the support of a fantastic team and office.

I feel very passionate about HomeforBusiness as I believe that lots of people want to create a better work/life balance and work from home, either setting up a new business or working as a freelancer. There are hundreds of genuine opportunities for people but often people do not know how to start. I want HomeforBusiness to empower anyone who wants to work from home profitably. With a panel of guest experts I will share share genuine business opportunities, business ideas, advice on running a business, online marketing, and health and wellbeing tips. I have also put together my favourite free online resources.

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Using Social Media For Marketing Is One Of The Best Things A Business Can Do

Our everyday lives have changed ever since social media came into being. Social networking sites are now a part of what we do each day. If you think for a moment and ask yourself whether you can spend a day without checking your Facebook status or tweeting at least once, or pinning a photograph?

The answer is a big NO!

If we don't used any form of social media for an entire day, it will pinch us and we will go to bed with a restless soul, not correctly knowing why we are feeling uneasy. For businesses, the same theory applies. Presently, they are heavily depended on their different social channels to ensure they are able to reach out to a large customer base. Almost every business manager and marketing head has reduced their budget on orthodox media and are using the same funds to improve their digital marketing prospects. Furthermore, each business establishment is also bent on creating an in-house media marketing team, which can looks after the regular digital media needs.

Using social media for marketing is useful as long as a business knows how to do it right. Otherwise, both time and money will be wasted, but with no positive results being reaped. Alternatively, if ill-planned social media marketing is carried on for some time, chances are that the digital reputation of a given brand can be permanently damaged. Therefore, it's important that social media activities are initiated and managed by trained professionals only. Especially when social media optimization is being done to improve the online image of an enterprise, business managers can't afford to take any chances with the team that is being hired for the purpose.

Using various media sites to achieve organizational goals can turn out to be a huge boon for any particular enterprise, provided it is done systematically and consistently. Care must be taken that the social media marketing mix so created is kept flexible, so as to accommodate new strategies or modify an existing one. I guess it's always wise if a media plan is scrutinized each month, and modifications are made. Sometimes mere scrutiny is enough to ensure the strategy is still effective and the activities carried are still able to provide positive results.

Nowadays, even the most frugal entrepreneur is using social platforms to promote his company. And needless to mention, he's able to enjoy the effects that are following eventually.

Mark Weyland propagates the idea of using social media for marketing and advertising needs. He's also an experienced digital media professional.

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How Confusing Is Social Media Optimization? Learn More!

Is Social Media Optimization Confusing You?

Social media optimization has become a new and revolutionary new way of advertising your business online. And while it's related to search engine optimization or search engine marketing, SMO can actually be a complex process of giving your business a more visual presence online and increasing recognition of your brand and products.

Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is also a unique way to get your business in front of the same consumers who are actively searching for your specific types of products on the major search engines like Google, Ask, Bing and Yahoo. SEM can also be a complex concept to understand and implement for a beginner to online marketing.

And when you add search engine optimization into the mix, getting your business, product or brand recognized online can easily turn into a very confusing labyrinth of tools and processes to wade through.

What Does It Mean For Your Business?
Basically, each of these processes is a tool for promoting your website or blog to the masses online, and each involves a way for driving more traffic to your site starting with search engines.

However, social media optimization targets traffic and potential customers that rely heavily on social sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and Tumblr for referrals and reviews of certain products and businesses.

Social media can easily be thought of ad today's "word of mouth" advertising but done online. And if you want your business to gain optimal brand recognition, traffic and sales, it's important to grasp an understanding of how all three of these concepts work together on the Internet to capture the attention of your target audience while they're actively searching for specific products and services.

So while SEO and SEM may use techniques to target consumers who rely on Google and Yahoo for their searches, SMO, or social media optimization, optimizes your website to show up on the same social media sites that your potential customers ultimately go to for referrals and product reviews.

Getting On Page One of the Search Engines
Setting all of the terms aside, what you ultimately want is for your website to show up on the first page of Google, as close to top position as possible, when people search for the types of products or services that your business sells. At the same time, you want your brand name to be recognized across all of the most popular social media sites such as Facebook, Digg and even MySpace.

The tools and techniques used to accomplish these sometimes complicated and time-consuming tasks are best understood by search engine marketing experts who have actually made it their primary business to study these techniques for which processes and tools work best for different types of businesses and brands.

Social media optimization and search engine marketing is definitely not a one-size-fits-all advertising and marketing process by any means. No two businesses are ever alike; each targets a different audience, different demographics and sometimes even a different geographic location needs to be targeted for local businesses.

Since different businesses and brands require a different approach, it's often best left to a search engine marketing firm that has carved out a niche for online marketing specialization to handle the fine tuning and details of a solid marketing strategy for whatever your business is.

Karen Musselman writes about working at home and online marketing, offering tips on a variety of home business topics including the importance of analyzing backlinks to your website or blog. You can visit Karen's blog, Working At Home With KSMusselman at ksmusselman.com for more insightful articles and stop by her YouTube channel too!

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Social Media Power: How African Businesses Can Use Social Media To Grow

Discover the 4 steps on how Social Media Marketing can help you:

· Improve your brand awareness

· Attract more clients

· Improve your ROI

· Enhance your current marketing strategies

Step # 1: Improve Your Brand Awareness

Even though African brands such as Standard Chartered Bank, Kenyan Airways and so on have huge advertising budgets they are still taking advantage of these free Social Media platforms to engage with their existing and potential customers.

Step # 2: Attract More Clients With Social Media

Social Media is mainly used for relationship building. People want to buy from those they Know, Like and Trust.

Before the formation of Facebook when someone wanted to open a bank account with Standard Chartered bank in Africa they would probably incur transportation costs as the bank might not be where they live.

Now with the help of these Social Networks, someone can be a fan or a follower of the bank without having to travel a long distance.

The customer gets to know more information about the company. The information is not just limited to financial information which is normally reported on the news channels but they get to know the social side which is the human side of the company. The customer is now in a position where they begin to feel that they know the company, they like the company and they can trust the company. Standard Chartered Bank on the other hand can now have easy access to their customers. Their customers are liking and commenting on their Social Media posts.

This is great relationship building. Relationship building is also about sharing valuable information about your products and services before attracting the customer. The company can easily win this customer as the customer would feel that the company is part of them. Even if a competitor is offering a cheaper service the customer would still prefer to stay with the one that offered the best service.

Facebook is a great platform to conduct market research as the information gathered are very current and not out-dated.

Kenya Airways asked their fans on their Facebook fan page in January 2012:

"What is an Online Check In?"

They offered a solution and had 29 likes and 9 comments.

You see how effective this marketing campaign can help your business.

You can see from the above example that Social Networking can be used in many ways to get to know your customer. It also will help you in the creation of your products and services. You get to know what they want before you start producing and in this way it saves you time and money and makes you more money.

Do you see how powerful Social Media can be? When you introduce these same strategies in your business you are definitely going to get more business.

Step # 3: Improve Your ROI

The above companies are doing very well online and have taken advantage of these free platform tools. For your Social Media activity to be successful you have to put some things in place. Or else it becomes a complete waste of time, energy and resources and not bearing any results.

To have maximum Return on Investment in your online activities you must have some strategies in place.

Know why you want to be on social media:

· Is it to improve your brand? or

· sell your products?

Draft a plan and work on its execution.

Develop a system where you are able to measure performance and metrics.

Find out what your competitors are doing online.

The above strategies must be placed under different projects to be effective.

Step # 4: Enhance Your Current Marketing Strategies

Incorporating Social Media into your current marketing activities can be challenging in the beginning. Not all your work force will be in support of this Social Media integration and understand its power and the positive impact that it can have in your business. You must be ready for such oppositions but it is useful, as it gives you the opportunity to educate your team about this. It is your job to find out how many people in your team are using some form of Social Media, how many hours they spend a day and who does not use it at all.

If in doubt you can always hire an Online Marketing Consultant.

You are now aware about the impact of Social Media Marketing and how powerful it is in helping brands in Africa. With over 17m African users on Facebook and still growing, use the above strategies and begin your Social Media Marketing campaign to grow your business and enhance your ROI today.

To help you catapult your business using Social Media, visit http://www.tinakyei.com/ and claim your free gifts: Catapult Your Business With Social Media Ezine 7 Day Video Training Series; Top 7 Keys To Attracting More Clients Online MP3 and a FREE chapter of my eBook " Catapult Your Business In 30 Days With Twitter".

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Are You Making These Social Media Mistakes?

Nearly 90% of small businesses network with their customers online, promote services and products and reach out to potential customers. Social media is an essential part of marketing online because there are hundreds of millions of users to be reached.

While social networking is one of the most popular ways to market your company, there are several mistakes that are made all too often by small business owners. These mistakes lead to missed opportunities.

Make sure you are not missing out on getting the most from your social media marketing and avoid some of these common mistakes:

Thinking social media marketing is free.

Sure, social media sites are free to join and use. But if you fail to make any sort of investment in your social networking strategy, then you are going to fall far short of your desired results. You will need to consider spending money on sponsored posts, advertisements, plus establishing a team for the sole purpose of social marketing.

If you are assigning staff members to social network duties in addition to their regular tasks, then you are short-changing both areas of your business. You need to have a person or persons who will be able to focus on engaging and interacting with loyal customers and reaching out to potential customers.

Failing to respond to customers.

Social media marketing is not a one-way street. You cannot simply blast a bunch of product information and call it a day. There are two sides to social media, a give and take. If you want to be successful online, you need to be engaging with the fans. When a fan reaches out to you through social media, you need to respond quickly.

Social interaction online is what Web 2.0 is all about. Start conversations, join in on existing ones and reply whenever someone asks you a question. The more you engage with your fan base, the wider your reach will be.

Find out what your target audience is talking about and use that information to get conversations started. Track your metrics in order to see what is working best and what needs improvement.

Talking business all the time.

It is important to remember that you are reaching out to people, not just consumers. You cannot spend all of your efforts on bombarding your fans with business talk. They want more. They want conversation and fun. Social media is about entertainment.

You can post about your products and services, but don't let that be all you talk about through your social networks. Post pictures and videos. Hold contests and special giveaways. Use your natural tone of voice in everything you post.

Make sure your customers know that there is a bona fide person at the other end of the computer and take interest in what they think and what they say. Use your social media as a way to connect on a deeper level with your customers.

Every business can benefit from social media, so long as you are doing everything you can to get the most from it. Avoid missing out on a strong marketing strategy by planning effectively.

What mistakes have you made with your social marketing? What changes have you made to get the most out of social networks for your business?

Dawn Pigoni of Be Social Worldwide is a certified social marketing specialist and a social media virtual assistant. Dawn offers superb social networking, social marketing and social bookmarking to WAHMs, Small Business Owners, Internet Marketers, Affiliate Marketers, and Coaches who desire to bring stunning internet presence through social networking to their businesses. Get Dawn's free report, Social Networking today & see how she can assist you with being Social Worldwide!

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The Perils of Electronic Socialization

We are social creatures. We are designed that way. Some of us are more social than others. But even the most reclusive enjoy some socializing.

Yet, the convenience of social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, and texting, is limiting good old fashioned social interaction. We don't spend time with each other like we should. Sure, there is the occasional text, "Hey, let's grab lunch", but a large percentage of our conversation is electronic. Will the long term affects change us?

Maybe.

Take Facebook for example. I initially had 300 friends when I first joined. What I liked about that was finding out what was happening in other people's lives who I don't normally see every day, week, or month - and being able to encourage them through "liking" their status update or comment. I soon found it was cluttering my mind with too much information about people and what they were or weren't doing - and even what they should or shouldn't be doing!

Is this how we really want a large portion of our minds to be used every day? It's like one continual soap opera.

What we miss because of electronic socialization:

Facial expressions. When I send something funny electronically, I don't get to see you smile or laugh. I don't participate in the warmth of that moment that can only come from sharing it face to face.Sharing meals. There is really, really something to sharing a cup of coffee or a meal with someone. It's meant to be that way.Affection. A kiss, hug, hand-shake, or hand on the shoulder or back. This is how we're wired. And it translates.

When you use something in a way it wasn't really made to be used, what happens? Over the course of time there will be some noticeable results - even damage! If we are not living the way we are designed, what will our society look like in the future? Robotic?

I shut down my Facebook for 6 months and returned with adding only 20 friends. I had 30 people (some extended family) wanting me to befriend them and I didn't. I wanted my Facebook world to be small: family and a few close friends (and so I could play Words With Friends).

What hurts us because of electronic socialization:

Time. People are spending too much time socializing this way. It affects us not getting things done and therefore, who wants company when you're so busy playing catch up? Not only that, but we're stressed. We are always vigilant. "Ding!" goes the smart phone - someone commented on Facebook.Comparing. Far too many people are comparing what so-and-so is doing or what so-and-so has and can you believe what so-and-so posted? And profile pictures that have us enjoying the thrill of celebrity status.Rejection. If someone doesn't respond to your post, you feel rejected and lonely. Especially when so-and-so got 300 likes and you only got 14. And especially when so-and-so always gets 25 comments and no one pays attention to you.

Life brings progress and change which we cannot and should not prevent. However, it is important to protect the fragility of our humanity through managing how we socialize - and not forget some good old fashioned breaking bread.

Kathy is a freelance writer and has a passion to bring hope to people of all ages who are hurting through disappointment, discouragement, and loss.

She is a member of the Working Writers Club, Writers On The Move, and a monthly contributor to Heartbeat the Magazine.

You can find her at "When It Hurts" - http://kathleenmoulton.com/

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