What is Social Media Marketing?

I recently attended the Social Media Money System webinar. I was one of 12,000 people on this call. My objective for being on the call was to learn more about these FOUR things:

What is Social Media Marketing?

What are the Best Social Media Tools?

What is best Social Media Marketing Software?

How can I use Social Media to help Promote My Business?

The moderators were two well known guys who (if you keep score by dollars & cents) are Rock Stars! The statement was made that by the end of this 90 minutes teleseminar, I was going to know more about Social Media Marketing than 99% of the people who actively participate in the Social Media wave.  In retrospect, I’m not so sure I know more than 99% of the people out there, but I did come away with some good info I can use to improve my social media persona and just as importantly, how to contribute to my social media network in a meaningful way.

THE DO’S and DONT’S OF SOCIAL MEDIA

I took copious notes during this 90 minute call, I hit the screen capture button more than thirty times and after reviewing my notes, I documented a few dozen key lessons from this event. In some ways, the things I learned NOT to do were as valuable as learning what I should be doing. For example, I learned that Social Media Marketing is NOT about posting a Click Here Affiliate Link every 30 seconds on Twitter. I learned that it’s critical to establish a casual and mutually beneficial relationship with your Twitter followers and your YouTube Fans loooong before you try and get them to “Buy My Stuff” or subscribe to your newsletter.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLATFORM

There seemed to be an over simplification of what the key Social Media platforms to be involved with. The main speaker kept referring to his concept of the “Triangulation” of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all pointing back to his Money Page (his Word Press Blog) when in reality, the social media platform includes a few dozen properties. The diagram below shows just how expansive the social media platform really is and it will probably be twice as large one year from now.

TOP 10 SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube

USTREAM

Flickr

DIGG

Stumble Upon

My Space

Squidoo

The speakers gave us a couple of very useful social media tips and tricks when it comes to getting major exposure to your quality social media content. I won’t list them all in this single post, but what I can tell you is that making a fun and informative 4-5 minute video and posting it to YouTube with your website link coded into the description is something you should do on a regular basis.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING BRANDING

If I had an extra $3,000 lying around, I would have signed up for the MASTER MIND program that was offered. Not only would I have gotten access to the DVD video training and the one-on-one  coaching, but this Platinum Package provided a customized “Branding” of all my social media properties with the same look and feel. That’s why McDonald’s doesn’t one day decide to paint a new Franchises store Purple. It’s important to have your Facebook page have the same “branding” as your Twitter background you’re your YouTube Channel.

SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC (Embed & Comment)

Keep this in mind when posting to your Blog. Make sure you “push” your content to ALL of your Social Media properties (see the list above).

Besides using your RSS feeds, I find the “Share This widget to be a very effective social media marketing “promo” tool. As a matter of fact, let me shamelessly invite you to use Share This right now!

Simply click the flashing “Share This” icon below this post and if you like this content, send it to any of the 30+ social media sites listed. You might ADD this widget to your Blog site if you haven’t already done so.

Lastly, it would be GREAT if you could Leave a Comment about this post (be it good, bad or ugly) just tell me what you thought and if this was a good read for you or not?

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS

In my next post, I’m going to include a video on How you can simply “mouse over” a Bit.ly link on Twitter or any social media site to quickly determine whether or not its worth investigating further, using a free Firefox add-on. This one technique alone saves me a ton of time culling through the hundreds of Tweets I read  every day from a bunch of very smart social media marketing people.

Tags: Marketing, Social Media, Tips, Tools, Traffic, Twitter, YouTube