How I Use Social Media & How It Really Works

You want more visitors, right? Well Social Media is one of the top two ways to get that traffic. The other one is search engine optimisation (a subject for another post).

There are two main aspects of social media we need to understand and learn about. They are content & promotion.

Firstly you need a blog that works well on the social web, so your design needs to be “social friendly”. You don’t want your blog to be too personal. The more journalistic your blog looks (like a paper or magazine for example) the better off you will be. Social media users have this belief that a blog that looks like this has better content. In most cases this is true.

You blog need to look pretty and professional, and your content must be original, compelling, engaging and there should be plenty of it.

But, before you start writing your content you need to decide on what audience you would like to write for and reach out too. This in turn decides which social media sites you need to use and leverage.

Here is a list of 50 social media sites these are the 50 most popular social news sites out there today. Browse the list and see if your blog or website is relevant to any of them. Different types of social media/news sites specialise or mainly pertain towards a certain niche. For example there are social sites for teens, wine lovers, African food, software, technology, gambling, finance, investing etc etc. So spend some time short listing a few favourites.

The next step is to actually join these sites and the main thing to remember is to participate regularly and not promote your own stuff right off the bat, spend some time getting a feel for the site and try and make a few friends while you are in there. They are called “social” sites for a reason.

A few guidelines for contribution include the following – add other users as friends, like I said also get to know them maybe through instant messenger, skype or or commenting on their blog. Vote on stories that you like, hunt them down, again join the conversation, if you have something to say post a comment. Submit your own stories too, find these stories from other social sites. If you are quick off the mark you can leverage this content before anyone else has had a chance. Ironically enough it’s not a good I idea to use content from your own blog or site.

Once you’ve been involved with the community for a while you will get some idea of what works and what doesn’t. You can then focus more on what works and in turn the stronger you and your account will become on the site. This means you will have a better chance of reaching the homepage. This is when the traffic starts.

Maintain your research and always try and work out what is making the home page and what isn’t.

Headlines are a great way of getting your stories noticed, be catchy& creative, not cheap & cheesy!

Once you have your title you can start writing your article which should contain an introduction, a detailed middle section with lots of facts & pictures. It is then time to start pushing your content out to different social sites. Remember when done properly this will create tons of traffic to your site so make sure it can handle the load! Follow the rules or else you WILL get a ban, once you have been banned there is almost no way you can join again.

If your website does not make the home page you can always try again, make sure you take the time to learn from your mistakes AND don’t give up.

It will do your business no end of GOOD!

So in conclusion, social media marketing is a lot of work and it isn’t that easy either. It can also be a bit hit and miss, sometimes it will work really well other times not so good.

A real understanding of Social Media comes only from getting stuck in, the goal posts are always on the move but if you stay in touch and grasp that understanding you will then be able to truly leverage the power of the social web.