Why Is Social Media Marketing So Important?: Getting Traffic with Social Media Pt 1

Social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg have become hot and are getting hotter all the time. Both online and offline businesses are jumping into social marketing – and for a good reason. It works. To stay competitive, you’ll want to continually build relationships and stay ever-present in the marketplace. Social media can help you to accomplish this. And, it’s fun.

Thankfully, there are simple and effective ways to use these social Web 2.0 sites. I’ll share some of those tips with you now.

Social Media Marketing Tip #1: Twitter Is Golden

Many people are using twitter as a way to connect with colleagues, family, friends, and customers. If you haven’t tried Twitter, now may be the time to set up an account and see what it’s all about. Twitter is a “micro blogging” platform where you can write (in 140 characters or less) anything you’d like. You can update people about your day, share resources, send a link to your websites, etc. – anything that you feel your followers will find useful or interesting.

When you’re a member of twitter you “follow” people and they will “follow” you.

This just means that when you log in to your twitter account you will see the messages posted by those who you’re following. Likewise, the people who have decided to follow you will see your messages.

Ex. Sally follows Janet So, when Sally logs into her Twitter account, she can see Janet’s updates on her screen along with all of the other people she’s following.

Assuming you’re using Twitter for marketing, the people you follow and those who follow you should be highly targeted. They log in because they are interested in what you and others have to say. Since there are only 140 characters allowed per “tweet” (twitter post), you’ll want to encourage your followers to follow your link for more information on what you are referring to.

If you use this social media site in the correct way you’ll gain loyal followers which leads to targeted traffic and then some very targeted customers. Some have even found Twitter traffic to be more targeted than pay-per-click advertsing and article marketing, both which have been shown to be  proven methods of internet marketing.

Social Media Marketing Tip #2: Facebook for Friends

Facebook is a social media site that actually started out as a way for college friends to keep in contact. Soon many  high school students signed on as well and now it has grown to being an important site for business communication.  . It seems that everyone you run into today has a Facebook page. As of this writing, Facebook has over 200,000,000 active users. That’s a whole lot of potential traffic.

Just like you have followers on Twitter, you have friends on Facebook and that’s where the power of Facebook lies.

You can update your status, link to your website, and leave comments on your friends’ Facebook pages. Again, this creates a great community feeling and also very targeted traffic since people will get to know you and become interested in your opinions and suggestions before clicking through a link to your website.