I have been talking more about social media marketing on JenniferSlegg.com lately, and I had a reader who came over from following JenSense ask me about why social media marketing is all the rage. It is definitely true that there is so much buzz and hype about social media marketing, and that can definitely leave the impression to people that it is the “popular” thing to do. But some people don’t see the full picture of WHY it is the popular thing to do, other that the obvious things like getting thousands of visitors from a front page Digg. So if you aren’t concerned about a social media campaign, here is why you should sit up and start doing it.

First and foremost, the traffic
Traffic you get from being on the front page of Digg can be server-impacting significant. And who doesn’t want all that extra traffic into a site, even if it is a huge burst over a period of an hour or two? You just need to ensure you have something in place to convert those visitors into something, whether it is RSS subscribers, newsletter signups or AdSense clicks.

More opportunities to dominate your serps.
In social marketing, the sites will all lead to you. If someone links to you on a Digg post, it has so much authority it can rank for keywords in the title that you just don’t have enough authority to rank for on your own. But, since there is really only a snippet or paraphrase of your original page or article, chances are pretty good that if it looks as though the article has what the visitor is looking for, he or she will click through to your site. This is why pages that are Dugg can still send traffic well after they made it to the front page – and even those with a smaller number of Diggs. So when someone searches for your brand, company name or keywords, you have blocked your competitors from more of the top ten if you are the end result of many of those results, whether it is your Facebook page, Twitter page or even an article on Digg or Sphinn.

Links
True, you get links from Digg, Sphinn, Delicious or which ever social media platforms you are using. But it also goes well beyond this. When you get great exposure on social media sites, this also results in a cascade effect where people who read it find it interesting enough to put it on other social media sites (if they see it on Sphinn, they might Stumble it or submit it to Digg) not to mention they might blog about it themselves, meaning even more direct links. One well written article that goes viral can lead to hundreds of links, if not more. And who doesn’t want that many natural links added to a site in a day and age when it is getting even harder to find them?

It’s not just the linkbait
Someone recently mentioned to me they couldn’t do social media because they hated everything about link bait. But while link bait is certainly one aspect of social media marketing, it isn’t only about link baiting either. An informative, quality article that goes viral does not have to be link bait. I generally don’t link bait and I never call out people just to create a buzz, yet I never have problems getting articles to go viral. So you definitely can make things go viral without having to be controversial or a bit of a jerk to do it, which tended to be the spin given on early link bait where often it was the biggest jerk who won the battle of the links. Fortunately, people are smarter, especially with the usage of nofollow.

Engaging the audience
It can an opportunity to interact with others about your site, even if it is just in Digg comments. Be sure to interact with those who comment, and then be sure to followup on any other blogs that might have picked it up from seeing it on Digg. Ideally, these comments should be made within the first hour to have the maximum impact, so be sure you are tracking the appropriate sites and keywords in your blog search of choice.

Buzz effect
Being on the front page of Digg or Slashdot, even something not promotional in any way, can have a huge effect on your Buzz factor. Suddenly people who had never heard of you will be seeing your name prominently, and especially if you combine it with an overall social media marketing campaign that goes beyond he initial buzz. If you see some company name buzzed about enough times, many people will be curious enough to at least Google it so they can see what on earth it is people keep talking about.

Reputation management
The more places that come up when searching for your company name that lead back to you, the better, especially if there are some sites ranking for your name that portray a less-than-positive spin on your company or its business practices. Social media marketing can be a great way to help dominate the serps with fuzzy warm listings rather than companysucks.com listings. You might not be able to get rid of all of them, but it definitely can help for reputation management.

Budget Marketing Option
A long as you are willing to read up on social marketing and the dos and don’ts on specific social sites, it can be a very affordable marketing option, as long as you don’t mind doing some legwork and putting in some elbow grease. You don’t need to invest in paid links or pay per click campaigns. Accounts on social media sites are almost always free to join, then it is just up to you to put the time and effort in so you begin to see a financial return on your time. So set up that Twitter or Facebook account, or begin Stumbling and Digging to get your feet wet, then look at how you can leverage it for greater return.

Using social media can be a powerful propeller for your business. No one should be focusing on just organic optimization or just search marketing optimization when social media can have such a strong effect on both.

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Written on March 24, 2008 at 11:01 pm and filed under Social Media Marketing. You can make a comment, or trackback from your own site.