Social Media Tools For Marketing – Build Your Following

After the numerous Webinars on getting traffic to our sites it became clear that using social media is fast becoming one of the most popular with internet marketers. It’s a great way to build your brand and image as well as getting free traffic so I thought it would be a good idea to look at some of the social media tools for marketing.

When I first started on the internet I heard the term Social Media being tossed around quite a lot but I had no idea exactly what it meant. So let’s have a look at that first.

What exactly is Social Media?

Traditional forms of media broadcast their information but social media is more of a conversation between people that is done online. When you think about it, the internet today has opened up the chance to meet new people from all around the world. It gives us the opportunity to connect in a way that has never been possible before.

Social media encourages the formation of communities that share a common interest to communicate.  Social media is a way of sharing your content, opinions, insights and swapping ideas with other people.

For the purposes of internet marketing and making money online social media is a way of increasing your exposure with the aim of building your brand and and getting traffic to your website. It’s a way of meeting new people and building new relationships for your online business.

Many people think first of Facebook and Twitter when they think of social media but it is much more than that.

So let’s have a look at some of the social media tools for marketing:

Social Networking – Meet and Greet

These sites allow you to build your own personal web pages and then connect with friends to share and communication. Some of the biggest social networks are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Other popular sites are Hi5 and Friendster.

Linkedin is often overlooked as a networking site and as a social media tool for marketing as it tends to be thought of as a way finding contacts you knew in the past. Savvy internet marketers are using it to find people they need to know for the future.

Microblogging – Say it with a sound bite

Although many people use Twitter for social networking it was set up as a microblogging platform. It encourages you to make your point in not more than 140 characters.  It’s a great tool for getting your name known and making friends with potential JV partners which all leads to making money online.

Tumblr is a close rival where you can share text, links, photos, audio and video and make short posts in tumblelogs. You can encourage other users to ask you questions.

Forums – Let’s pow wow

Forums existed before we heard the term “social media”. They are places where you can go to have a discussion and ask questions about a particular subject. There are forums for just about everything you can think of from health to dating and internet marketing.

Most forums let you create a “signature” that can include a link to your website, squeeze page or blog. The signature appears under each of your posts in the forum.

If you visit these often and join in the conversation and answer other people’s questions people will notice you and want to find out more about you through the link in your signature. In some forums the URL will give you a back link as well.

Content sharing –  Show me yours and I’ll show you mine

There are internet communities that are formed around particular forms of content. You can share your photos on flickr.com, your videos on YouTube or you text on HubPages and Squidoo lenses.

HubPages is one of the “newer” social media content sites. They give you a score to let you know how on target you are in terms of being effective at social media.

It seems that Google likes Squidoo and Hubpages. By writing original articles that relate to your website and include your keyword as anchor text  you can get ranked in Google more easily that other methods.

Bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Diigo and Reditt  allow you to share, organize, search, and store addresses of websites that you want to visit again. You tag them with keywords so others can find them when searching.

You can submit your own blog content or articles to these sites but some frown on it and regard it as a form of spam. Only book mark your very best posts or articles. If the content you are bookmarking is high quality then it could get votes from other readers which could result in getting on the font page and massive amounts of traffic!

It’s better if others book mark your site. Make this easy for them by placing a share button at the beginning or end of every article or post.

The branding and traffic you get from regularly using a few of these social media sites will help you build up a large following over a long period of time.This all helps you to make money online.

Although there are many others the ones I have outlined are some of the most useful social media tools for marketing. Do you have any other favorites you would like to share?