Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing Blog

Promoting your website through social media marketing can be a lot of work.  It’s no wonder that many companies outsource the job, but if you are just starting out or have a small budget you can still promote your company using social media marketing. These are the steps you can take to become your own social media expert.

1. Content
The best way to promote yourself online is to provide interesting, original and informative content. It’s important for search engine optimization and email list subscribers. It’s also important in social media marketing. You have nothing to market without original content. A blog is a great way to continually add value-added content in a meaningful way for the search engines and for returning visitors.  A blog gives you something to talk about on search media marketing sites too.

2. Create a facebook page
Create a page for your business on facebook. Facebook pages can be promoted with an ad on facebook. Make sure you put information on your page to make it interesting.  As an example, here is a link to Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing’s facebook page: http://cli.gs/9TsTt7

3. Setup a Twitter profile for your business
Setup a Twitter profile in your business’s name or in your name so you can become known in your industry.    Follow people who are exports in your industry.  Here is an example: http://twitter.com/acclaimedwebdev

4. Post updates to your facebook page, twitter and bookmarking sites
Post updates for your fans and for the search engines by posting at least once daily to facebook, your twitter account and to bookmarking sites such as digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon and others.

5. Create a linkedin profile for you and your business
Create a linkedin profile to show off your skills with other professionals and network online with old clients and co-workers.  One of the extra benefits of linkedin is the ability to use your company profile to market yourself to potential, new employees.

6. Use groups on facebook and linkedin
Use groups to share information with other in your industry and find new customers by starting and joining groups that would be of interest to your target audience.

Social media marketing, much like email marketing, is a great way to keep your message fresh and new and in front of your customers and potential customers on a daily basis.  Your facebook fans will see all you updates on their facebook homepage on a daily bases, so you are only limited by the interesting and relevant information you have to share with them. While customers can get annoyed with receiving marketing emails from you on a daily basis.  A status message on facebook or twitter is much less intrusive as long as it is interesting and informative.

If you’re not sure how to get started or feel it’s just too much work for you to do on your own, Acclaimed Web Development & Online Marketing offers professional social media management services.  Request a quote to get started today!

Social media marketing and blogging can take up most of an internet marketers time.  I’ve been doing some research lately to find tools to make social media networking and blogging more efficient, less time consuming and more fun.  I just wanted to tell you about Five Tools I’ve found that I think are awesome.

1.  WordPress for iPhone Application
I’ve seen some sad excuses for iPhone Apps when it comes to trying to find anything that will actually help you be productive away from your PC or laptop, but this tool looks like it’s going to be a winner.  It allows you to add multiple blogs, see as many of your recent posts as you want, edit local drafts and post right from your iPhone.  I’m so excited about finding this app.

2. Blog Carnival Submitter
I just found out about blog carnivals and then I found out about this tool that’s only $27 and lets you post your blog to as many blog carnivals as you can find for your industry.  This is a new product, but so far it looks promising.  Check it out:

http://www.blogcarnivalsubmitter.com

3. Setup your own facebook blog application with Blogfuse.com
This site is a tool for creating your own facebook application for your blog.  It’s an interesting way to potentially get your blog out in front of 60 million people.  Of course, you first have to get nine of your friends (you make ten) to install the application on their facebook, so you can submit it to the Facebook Application Directory.  You can also promote your application with an ad on facebook.

4. Ping.fm
I use this site to update all of my social networks at once.  I’ve actually signed up for more social networks because I handle them all through this easy to use website.

5. Firefox Shareaholic Add-on
This Firefox Add-on makes it really easy to share anything you find on the internet.  The best part is it takes up very little space in your existing address bar rather than adding yet another toolbar to the top of your browser window.  Download the shareaholic firefox add-on now.

Well, they are both huge right now.  I don’t know which is growing at a faster pace.  I, for one, certainly jumped on the facebook bandwagon first.  It was an easy jump from myspace, but myspace is long gone in my book.  I’m still out there.  I think most of the 50 or so friends I had on myspace might still have myspace pages too, but I don’t login or even look at myspace unless someone sends me a message.  Most of the working adults I know never bothered with myspace, but facebook is a different story.  Just about everyone I ever worked with is suddenly on facebook.  I’ve found friends from college, high school and even junior high.

Well, then, along comes twitter.  I think I initially signed up for twitter because I saw an ad on facebook.  I signed up and then my account sat there for months.  I just didn’t get it.  I had no idea what to do with it.  Then, I started hearing about twitter on the radio.  Hmmm, I thought.  I have a twitter account.  Maybe I should take another look at it, but I didn’t.  Not for a few more months.  Then I started hearing about it from friends.  Then, I found a twitter feed and checked it out.  It was slow process for me, but I finally figured it out.

Twitter is a great way to get your message out there as often as you like in 140 characters or less.  Twitter is finally taking it’s place in social media marketing and in a big way.  I’ve found that by simply finding and following people in your industry, people start following you, people you don’t even know.

I feel like twitter is really just starting to take off and many people haven’t figured out what it can do for them yet, but once they do it’s going to be as big if not bigger than facebook, especially for businesses.  I also found another great website called twibs.com.  It’s only purpose is to provide a directory of businesses on twitter.  I think websites and programs that use twitter as there main vehicle of getting their message out there are going to be popping up like mad in 2009.  I can’t wait to see what will come out next.

A client recently brought up the idea of putting their website on myspace.com.  My response was to wonder if businesses are on myspace.com.  Isn’t business facebook.com domain?  Clearly not all social media marketing sites are directed towards businesses.  Many are directed towards people making friends and staying in contact with friends, so I decided to do some research on myspace.com to see if I found any businesses advertising.  I first looked for online book stores with myspace.com and found one that looked like a legitimate business.  Then, I searched for web developers and found a few, but only a tiny fraction of the web development businesses you would find on facebook.com.

My client pointed out to me that myspace.com is for bands.  She sells music, so myspace.com may very well be a great place for her to do a little social media marketing.  For most businesses, I would certainly recommend setting up pages on facebook.com and linkedin.com.  Join twitter.com and start following people in your industry.  Tweet everyday about your products, services and your industry.  Not only is twitter a great opportunity for people to find you, but you may actually learn a lot from twitter too.

Here is a list of social media marketing websites:

http://www.joe-whyte.com/2007/04/02/looking-for-a-list-of-social-media-sites-i-have-them-all-here/