Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

Doing better networking using social media

Networking is an exercise you have to conduct almost everyday if you’re in a business of selling — whether you work for an organization or for yourself (as a freelancer). Networking as a concept has existed since time immemorial but it has been taken to an entirely new level by social networking websites like Twitter and FaceBook.

Networking doesn’t just mean hanging around with people, although it also doesn’t mean befriending others just for commercial gains. It basically means knowing the right people (people who have use of your products and services or who can recommend your products and services to others) and establishing a communication channel so that you can reach each other when needed. It may involve:

Attending the right gatherings
Keeping in touch and communicating on a regular basis
Letting people know how you can serve them

This Mashable blog posts highlights 7 things you can do for better networking. Basically, networking takes time and effort and some people do it as a full-time job, although this is not called for if you have to run a business. For instance, being a content writer, if I post messages and updates on FaceBook and Twitter all the time and keep interacting people will soon think, “Heck, when does this guy do his work?” And this is true indeed. If you don’t strike a balance you’ll end up neglecting your core business.

For most, keeping in touch is enough. Keep in touch, and help people if you can. Sometimes go out of your way, but you don’t have to be unreasonable. Give people an incentive/reason to remember you in good stead, and convey to them that you are available if they require a particular service, content writing and copywriting in my case, for instance.

Good content establishes your authority

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Why so much hype about publishing good content on your website or blog on a regular basis? On the basic level there are two reasons: search engines prefer websites and blogs that have fresh content, and social networking guys and girls always have something to promote or retweet. So your content constantly generates new traffic and keeps the buzz going.

On a more advanced level, people begin to respect you (not as an elder but as a person who knows things and shares them confidently), and when they respect you they don’t fear doing business with you. When you constantly publish content people can derive knowledge from, they begin to see you as an authority. Interestingly, I’ve observed this on the Internet and also in my day-to-day life, given a chance people like to listen to those with authority and they like to read what they’ve written. But does only publishing good content make you an authority?

Not necessarily. Good content must be followed by regularity and relationships. Occasional sparks don’t bind people to your ideas. They have a low attention span on the Internet because so much is happening here. Written a great blog post? Cool! How are you going to make people read it if you haven’t created an audience for yourself? An audience is often created a few persons at a time. You create valuable content on a regular basis, you start interacting on other blogs, online forums and social networking websites and people start visiting your website or blog. If they see something remarkable there, they make an effort to return and check out what new you have published. Even after 15 days if they don’t find new content they assume you publish occasionally, and soon they lose interest, and you start all over again, and the loop goes on and on.

On the other hand if you publish valuable content regularly, they become used to visiting your website; they may even subscribe to your RSS feeds or newsletter, and start following you on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with what you have to say. Sometimes they may also link to you from their websites and blog posts, or promote your links on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon etc. This creates a cascading effect. More and more people become aware of your thoughts and ideas and they want to interact with you. When they interact with you you get a platform to share more of your knowledge. This is how you establish your authority.

Content strategy before social media strategy

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A major part of social media interactions involves promoting interesting and valuable content. Whether it’s blogging, Twittering, Facebook updates, Digging, Stumbling or simply forwarding email messages with engaging links, people are basically promoting content. That content can be in any format: videos, images, animations or text. If it’s interesting and useful, it is valuable.

In this post titled Social media starts with a content strategy the author has rightly stated that on social media nobody cares about you; they care about the content you can provide. People will promote your content if they find it interesting, relevant, topical or useful. So if you thinking about launching your social media campaign you better have some solid content production and content marketing strategy in place.

How do you formulate an advantageous content generation and marketing strategy?

Identify your market and recognize what it is exactly looking for. Does you content meet their requirement? Does it convey the right message? Do you promote your content in front of the right audience? Selling combs to bald people may be an accomplishment but in the long run it neither benefits your customers or clients nor it benefits you.

A successful content generation and marketing strategy involves three fundamental questions:

What?
Why?
Where?
How?

What sort of content should your website or blog have? What purpose does it solve and why you should publish it? Where should you promote your content – in front of whom? And what strategy and methodology you should follow in order to promote your content in front of the right audience.

Once you’ve answered these question, you can kick start your social media strategy.

What does content marketing actually mean?

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Content marketing is one of the most popular buzz words these days on the Internet and surprisingly, it gets more traction than content creation, without which content marketing has no purpose to exist.

So what is content marketing?

It basically means promoting the right kind of content in front of the right kind of audience. Content is king is a clichéd expression but it has never been truer. Whether it’s the search engines or the social media websites, they survive and thrive on content: whatever format the content has. But is content marketing as easy as this?

Hardly. To create a solid content marketing strategy, you need to clearly define your audience, and have a lucid perception of what sort of content would tickle their buying buds. Whom do you want to target? Customers, clients, subscribers, advertisers or visitors who devote a fair amount of their attention upon your advertisers? Then you start creating content accordingly. If you are a web design company you want to attract prospective clients who would be interested in buying your services. If you are a content writer or an online copywriter (like yours truly) you would like to attract people who would want to hire you as a freelance writer.

In the early 2000s for nearly two years my website came on the first spot on Google for the word "web designing" because I had generated lots of content around this phrase. The problem was, my website mostly attracted people who wanted to learn web designing rather than hire me for their web design projects. The targeting was all wrong.

So when I started creating content for this website it was constantly on my mind that I shouldn’t end up attracting just "aspiring" content writers and work-at-home people who wanted to do something in their spare time. My content should attract prospective clients. Well-orchestrated content marketing can achieve this for you.

Once you have identified your audience and have created a significant number of blog posts or web pages, you must start promoting and marketing your content using the following methods:

Opt-in email marketing: This is one of the oldest, and still one of the best ways of getting your word around. When people are on your website or blog encourage them to subscribe to your email updates so that they can receive the content you publish without interruption.
RSS feeds: Encourage people to subscribe to your RSS feed by prominently displaying the RSS button on your website or blog.
Social media, networking and bookmarking websites: Such websites can bring you tons of traffic. These websites include FaceBook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc. They may seem to be bringing lots of random traffic (and increasing your bandwidth costs in the process) without generating much business but they certainly increase your visibility and help you strengthen your brand presence.
Online forums: Yes, they’re still popular and get lots of traffic from search engines.
Guest posting and commenting on other blogs: Find blogs in your niche. Write guest blog posts for them (something I have never been able to do actually) and participate in their comments section. Again, this may not bring you direct customers but it does generate buzz and this leads to customers and clients.
Search engine optimization: Some people believe in SEO and some don’t. The most logical thing to do is, produce highly relevant content using keywords your prospective customers and clients would use as search terms on search engines. This can draw lots of relevant traffic to your blog or website.

Content marketing is an ongoing process simply because there are always people competing with you. Ignore it for a few months and you’ll realize you almost have to start it from the beginning, unless you’re a celebrity.