What is social media? According to Wikipedia, "At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers."
In other words, the evolution of the Internet has changed the way that people interact online and the way information is presented. For example, let's look at the definition above from Wikipedia. At any moment, anyone across the planet can edit and add to this definition. Wikipedia is an excellent example of the changing nature of the web and proliferation of user-generated content.
So, why should you care about social media? According to a recent study by Nielson called Global Faces and Networked Places, social networking and blogging sites are now the fourth most popular sector on the Internet. They have even surpassed personal e-mail. It's highly likely that your customers and prospects are already participating in social media, so why not get involved and open up the lines of communication?
There is no one perfect equation for social media, but this article features some basic information to get started. When you create your social media plan, remember to start simple. Instead of trying to participate in every online community, focus on just a few areas where your customers and prospects congregate. Feel free to experiment and see what works for your business.
Blogs - A blog is a simple website similar to an online journal where content on a particular subject is added on a regular basis. Blogs are one of the easiest ways to increase website traffic. First, they give you an outlet to add keyword-rich text to your website. Second, blogs can help build inbound links to your site. If your blog features valuable content, other bloggers and web users will link to it. Last, the frequently updated content can positively affect your search engine results. Mainstream search engines monitor the dynamism of websites and static content reduces page-rank. By adding blogging capabilities, a website gains the dynamism favored by search engines. (Please note: Many simple blogging solutions actually host your blog on their domain, so you miss out on web traffic. To increase traffic to your website, it is best to host a blog on your company domain.)
Blogs also allow companies to share expertise, product and company news, client success stories, and other valuable information, as well as offer an opportunity to interact personally and receive feedback from their audience.
Before creating your own corporate blog, you may want to begin participating in other blogs related to your industry. By following and commenting on blogs, you can build awareness and link to your website. Keep in mind, this is an opportunity to share valuable input, not spam a bunch of blogs with your URL. Blog search engines, such as Technorati and IceRocket, can help you find popular blogs in a number of subject areas.
Social Networks - Social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, have changed online communication and given consumers the ability to interact directly with businesses and interact with each other about businesses.
Social networks, in turn, have given businesses an opportunity to share important information regarding their products and services, openly communicate with customers and prospects, and drive traffic to their website. You can even integrate social networking with your corporate website through automatic content feeds or social network links that allow web visitors to easily tag and share your content on their own social network pages.
Social Bookmarking - Social bookmarking sites (Digg, delicious, StumpleUpon, Reddit, and more) allow users to identify online content that might be of interest to others. Social bookmarking is a good SEO practice for business because it helps build external links that point to your site, therefore increasing the relevance of page information to search engines. Through these social bookmarking sites, marketers are able to submit and share content with an online community.
By also including social bookmark links on your website content pages, such as news releases, blogs, articles, and webcasts, you make it easy for visitors to share, and therefore promote, your content to other users.
In this article, we have discussed only a few social media examples. Based on your business goals, you may also consider media-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, forums, Wikis, or other forms of social media. Just like the nature of the web itself, social media is constantly evolving. Incorporating social media into your business will not only take a commitment to maintaining and monitoring your social media efforts, but also consistently educating yourself on new social media sites and techniques.
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