Social Media Marketing in 2012 – Are You Prepared? Review Now Tweet Pin It by Geno Thampi - 1/6/2012 30764 Views The regular Dos, the onetime Dos and Don’ts As the New Year has just started up, it’s time to plan ahead with social media marketing for a long time to come. 2011 has been the period of peak social media marketing activity. Before we dive into the checklist of social media marketing preps for 2012, let’s see a few statistics. Social media examiner has been my all-time favorite when it comes to statistics and news on social media marketing. Here you go, a survey done by social media examiner which presented some interesting figures of social media marketing in 2011. Social Media Marketing Usage Statistics View more documents from submitinme . As you see, majority of businesses agree with the fact that social media marketing is important for their business promotion. Obviously 93% of the businesses out there are involved into social media marking in some form. With these statistics, it is clear that you landed on this news post because you are one among the 93% of businesses using social media for promotion. While seeing the statistics for “Experience with social media marketing”, most of the businesses had entered into social media marketing by 2011 which gets them 1 full year of social media marketing experience. Alright let’s get rid of the statistics now and get to the point. Social media marketing this year had expanded a lot beyond the “feisty 3” – Facebook, twitter and linkedin. However, we feel linkedin falling out of internet marketing lead, focusing more to business networking. The gap is filled by the new comer Google +. Though the social media sites and networks have grown all over like mushrooms, none of them were able to make a mark as the top 3 sites did. It is for sure that 5 hours/ week cannot let anyone get into active participation in all the social networks available today. For the moment of truth, you don’t have to water and grow your network in all the social media sites. So when stepping into a new year, you should know what to do regularly and what to do one time and what never to do as social media marketing. Regular Dos Social media is not all about twitter, facebook and Google plus. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to enter deep into each and every social media site which is available today. Identifying your possible social media interaction lets you decide which social networks are to be added to your regular social media promotion list. For example, being an SEO company, we cannot add flickr to our regular social media marketing list though we can manage to put together pictorial representation of our services. Those images don’t go viral through any of the image sharing social networks. Our regular social media marketing efforts should be on social media sites where we can share informative content such as blogs, status updates, social groups etc. For Regular Social Media Marketing, include: Facebook Wall Updates + Tweets + Google Plus Stream posts (Make sure you are posting unique information across these 3 sites) Don’t just stop there. Identify the social media stuff that you can generate and pick top 10 other targeted social media spots. For example, if you are promoting a travel website, you should be adding social video sharing sites and social photo sites. One Time Do’s: As already said, social media is not just carrying countable number of sites today. Based on our research at SIM labs, there are about 600 social media sites where you need to have your business presence. This is not mainly for social media marketing, but to secure your brand identity in these social media spots. There are several third party social media name check services available to know the open spots for your brand. www.namechk.com is a good tool to find available usernames/ vanity urls in the social media sites. Claiming the usernames in these social media sites would be close doors to the scammers to misuse your brand name. Consider this activity as brand reputation management; this is a onetime process. Create fully completed profiles in the social media sites and forget them. Saving time with synching applications There are tools available (since 2009) to sync social media sites and social networks so that you can manage them all from a single place. Ping.fm is one of the best tools to sync your social media sites if you are a beginner or doesn’t care to look into real statistics of your social media marketing efforts. There are several other advanced social syncing applications such as hootsuite, onlywire and hellotxt where you can have total control over all connected social networks. Our research team was able to sync a maximum of 50 social media sites using these tools. One important note when using these tools: DON”T sync any of the sites you pick to be included in the “regular do” list. Update them manually with unique content whenever possible. Never Do’s in social media marketing Don’t get into all the social media sites and social networks just because everyone else does. As said earlier, identify your target social audience and pick the spots to promote. Another main thing not to do with social media marketing is; not to promote your brand every time. Remember that social media marketing is entirely different from SEO or any other conventional internet marketing. You cannot just drop links on each and every post or action you make within the social media sites. You will have to really dedicate your time to present the audience with something really useful to them (which includes interesting information without any motive of promotion in it). So here is the checklist for social media marketing Identify the top 20 social networks suitable for niche where the target audience is present. Add them to the regular maintenance list along with facebook, twitter and Google Plus Secure your brand identity, usernames and vanity urls with all the 600 bets social media sites. Create fully completed profiles even if it takes time because this time invest me is just one time As you will have only around 25 social media sites to maintain if the ideas in this article are followed, allocate at least 2 hours a day for social media marketing. Post information; get involved with the fan network by commenting to their posts and encouraging them. Category : Social Media Tags : social media marketing, social media promotion, social media brand identity, Rate this news Share this news delicious digg facebook diigo folkd reddit stumbleupon twitter linkdn About Geno Thampi Not a born Shakespeare! But I still write articles and blogs to share my ideas and thoughts on SEO and SMO. Being a part of SEO research team of SubmitINme, I keep my ears and eyes open, and the pen ready to grab, write and share trending topics in search engine .... more info facebook twitter googleplus linkedin blog rss

Social Media Marketing in 2012 – Are You Prepared?

Review Now

Pin It

by Geno Thampi - 1/6/2012 30764 Views

The regular Dos, the onetime Dos and Don’ts

As the New Year has just started up, it’s time to plan ahead with social media marketing for a long time to come. 2011 has been the period of peak social media marketing activity. Before we dive into the checklist of social media marketing preps for 2012, let’s see a few statistics. Social media examiner has been my all-time favorite when it comes to statistics and news on social media marketing. Here you go, a survey done by social media examiner which presented some interesting figures of social media marketing in 2011.

Social Media Marketing Usage Statistics

View more documents from submitinme

.

As you see, majority of businesses agree with the fact that social media marketing is important for their business promotion. Obviously 93% of the businesses out there are involved into social media marking in some form. With these statistics, it is clear that you landed on this news post because you are one among the 93% of businesses using social media for promotion. While seeing the statistics for “Experience with social media marketing”, most of the businesses had entered into social media marketing by 2011 which gets them 1 full year of social media marketing experience.

Alright let’s get rid of the statistics now and get to the point. Social media marketing this year had expanded a lot beyond the “feisty 3” – Facebook, twitter and linkedin. However, we feel linkedin falling out of internet marketing lead, focusing more to business networking. The gap is filled by the new comer Google +. Though the social media sites and networks have grown all over like mushrooms, none of them were able to make a mark as the top 3 sites did.

It is for sure that 5 hours/ week cannot let anyone get into active participation in all the social networks available today. For the moment of truth, you don’t have to water and grow your network in all the social media sites. So when stepping into a new year, you should know what to do regularly and what to do one time and what never to do as social media marketing.

Regular Dos
Social media is not all about twitter, facebook and Google plus. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to enter deep into each and every social media site which is available today. Identifying your possible social media interaction lets you decide which social networks are to be added to your regular social media promotion list.
google plus.jpg

For example, being an SEO company, we cannot add flickr to our regular social media marketing list though we can manage to put together pictorial representation of our services. Those images don’t go viral through any of the image sharing social networks. Our regular social media marketing efforts should be on social media sites where we can share informative content such as blogs, status updates, social groups etc.

For Regular Social Media Marketing, include:
Facebook Wall Updates + Tweets + Google Plus Stream posts (Make sure you are posting unique information across these 3 sites)

Don’t just stop there. Identify the social media stuff that you can generate and pick top 10 other targeted social media spots. For example, if you are promoting a travel website, you should be adding social video sharing sites and social photo sites.

One Time Do’s:
As already said, social media is not just carrying countable number of sites today. Based on our research at SIM labs, there are about 600 social media sites where you need to have your business presence. This is not mainly for social media marketing, but to secure your brand identity in these social media spots. There are several third party social media name check services available to know the open spots for your brand. www.namechk.com is a good tool to find available usernames/ vanity urls in the social media sites. Claiming the usernames in these social media sites would be close doors to the scammers to misuse your brand name. Consider this activity as brand reputation management; this is a onetime process. Create fully completed profiles in the social media sites and forget them.

Saving time with synching applications
There are tools available (since 2009) to sync social media sites and social networks so that you can manage them all from a single place. Ping.fm is one of the best tools to sync your social media sites if you are a beginner or doesn’t care to look into real statistics of your social media marketing efforts. There are several other advanced social syncing applications such as hootsuite, onlywire and hellotxt where you can have total control over all connected social networks. Our research team was able to sync a maximum of 50 social media sites using these tools.

One important note when using these tools: DON”T sync any of the sites you pick to be included in the “regular do” list. Update them manually with unique content whenever possible.

Never Do’s in social media marketing
Don’t get into all the social media sites and social networks just because everyone else does. As said earlier, identify your target social audience and pick the spots to promote. Another main thing not to do with social media marketing is; not to promote your brand every time. Remember that social media marketing is entirely different from SEO or any other conventional internet marketing. You cannot just drop links on each and every post or action you make within the social media sites. You will have to really dedicate your time to present the audience with something really useful to them (which includes interesting information without any motive of promotion in it).

So here is the checklist for social media marketing

Identify the top 20 social networks suitable for niche where the target audience is present. Add them to the regular maintenance list along with facebook, twitter and Google Plus
Secure your brand identity, usernames and vanity urls with all the 600 bets social media sites. Create fully completed profiles even if it takes time because this time invest me is just one time
As you will have only around 25 social media sites to maintain if the ideas in this article are followed, allocate at least 2 hours a day for social media marketing. Post information; get involved with the fan network by commenting to their posts and encouraging them.

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Social Media

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social media marketing, social media promotion, social media brand identity,

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About Geno Thampi

Not a born Shakespeare! But I still write articles and blogs to share my ideas and thoughts on SEO and SMO. Being a part of SEO research team of SubmitINme, I keep my ears and eyes open, and the pen ready to grab, write and share trending topics in search engine .... more info