What Is Social Media Marketing? According to Wikipedia, social media is “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos, and audio.” While that is mouthful it doesn’t even begin to express the revolutionary changes that social media marketing is creating.

Social media has morphed into a social phenomenon that reaches into most social interactions. Social media has evolved into a very powerful interaction of independent websites where people share information and ideas. According to Rupert Murdock “Now it’s the people who are in control.”

How did BIG business let this happen. Arrogance, after all the Internet is just about games and e-mail, isn’t it? Well there is no going back now, so let’s find out what social media marketing is and how it is affecting you?

First of all, get rid of the idea that it, social media, is just going to go away. There are over 200,000,000 published blogs and 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands. Add to that the fact that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertising and you have some very compelling reasons to understand the effect social media on your marketing efforts.

To add salt to the marketers’ wounds, people no longer have to put up with unwanted solicitations. Solicitations over the phone, junk e-mail, mail, TV are all being blocked or ignored. Won’t people also block social media?

No, the reason they won’t block social media is because of the difference between social media and newspaper, T.V., radio, etc. The difference is lack of editorial control of content. People interact with each other sharing content rather than reacting to content provided to them. They do not block the sharing.

Pundits say social media marketing is a state of mind; that is marketing with social responsibility. I believe it’s more like a party, not a rock-em sock-em party rather a social cocktail party. A place where you may meet new people and start conversations, however, there is no selling. You or they may answer questions or offer advice or stories about friends but no selling. It’s sharing.

That’s why Network Marketing and Social Media Marketing are on a conversion course. Social Media is creating a new Network Marketing revolution. It’s a very exciting time for those of us who understand the potential of Social Networking. The Baby Boomers have always been the trend setters and they will continue to set certain trends because they still have control of the purse strings. And, the fastest growing segment on Facebook, which has over 500 Million registered users, are the people controlling those purse strings, 55 – 65 year old females.

Couple the Baby Boomer move to social networking with the fact that 96% of generation Y, who will soon outnumber the Baby Boomers, already belong to at least one social network, and you have an exciting marketing opportunity.

What do you do? You sign-up with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and The Natural Networker to allow me to help you integrate your home based networking business into the new social media world.

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In 2006, Google spent around $1.6 Billion to acquire YouTube – one of the most prolific interactive websites around was gobbled up by the biggest dot com in the world. What’s remarkable is that YouTube wasn’t earning anything near an income worthy of comment and it still isn’t. Google bought it for two reasons – first, the massive subscriber base that YouTube had, and second, YouTube is a new breed of interactive site that Google believes is the future of the internet. Google have spent more money researching this than you and I will ever have in our banks so you need to pay attention to this fledgling trend before it transforms into a cash-yielding craze (it will, by which time you risk missing the boat).

Interactive websites are hot, getting hotter – and in a moment I’ll show you how you can OWN an interactive site in the niche of your choice without spending a hell of a lot (indeed, if you’re a DRR member, you’ll get this as part of your membership). First, consider these rather interesting tid-bits of information:

- YouTube gets over 100 million downloads of its videos every single day.

- The site was founded in 2005 and within two year it’s creators became multi-millionaires. Ironically, all they did was understand that social networking sites (the same type of site you’ll be owning) were the future and created a simple site that allows users to upload/download videos, rate things & add comments. What you really *must* take on board here is that there will be several micro-sites like YouTube popping up in just about every niche around. Internet marketing, business, franchising, travel, real estate… everything. For most of these niches, dominant social networking sites have not yet been established. The field is open for you to get out there and make your mark.

Now, let’s look at what social networking is and how you might be able to use it to attract targeted traffic in droves:

Social networking. We have all likely heard of it before, but not everyone knows what it means? If you were asked to define what social networking was, would you be able to give an accurate definition? Unfortunately, most individuals cannot, even though it is likely that they participate in some form of social networking, especially online.

Social networking is defined as the grouping of individuals together into to specific groups, often like a small community or a neighborhood. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in schools or in the workplace, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the Internet is filled with millions, if not more, of individuals who are looking to meet other Internet users and develop friendships.

When it comes to social networking online, websites are used. These websites are known as social networking websites. Social networking websites are, in a way, like an online community of Internet users. Depending on the social networking website in question, many of these online community members share a common bond, whether that bond be hobbies, religion, or politics. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profiles or profile pages of other members or even contacting them.

The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking online. Another one of those benefits includes diversity. Unlike in most schools or workplaces, the Internet gives individuals, from all around the world, access to social networking sties. This means that although you are in the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Japan. Not only will you make a new friend, you but may also learn a thing or two about a new culture.

As previously mentioned, social networking often involves grouping specific individuals or organizations together. While there are a number of social networking websites that focus on particular Internets, there are others that do not. These websites are often deemed traditional social networking websites. These types of websites typically have an open membership. This means that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are. However, once you are inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends; thus eliminating others that do not meet your criteria.

If networking on the Internet sounds like something you would be interested in, you are encouraged to learn more about it, such as the dangers of social networking. These dangers often involve online predators or individuals who claim to be someone that they are not. Although danger does exist with networking online, it also exists with networking out in the real world. As when you are meeting friends at a bar, school, or work, you are advised to proceed with caution online. By being aware of your surroundings and who you are talking to, you should be able safely enjoying social networking online.

Once you have learned everything that you feel you need to learn, about social networking online, you can begin to search for networking communities to join.

Let’s move on now to how social networking websites can help your business website promotion.

A large number of Internet users run their own personal websites, but others run their websites as a way to make money. Of course, any website owner wishes to promote their online website, but those who rely on their websites for income are more willing to. Whichever type of website you have, did you know that you could help to promote it with online social networking websites?

If you are wondering how and why you should use social networking websites to promote your online website, you are not alone. A fairly large numbers of Internet users aren’t even sure what social networking sites are or how they work. Online social networking websites are like online communities. They give Internet users an easy and fairly safe way to come together. Many social networking websites are designed to make it easier for you to search for and make contact with other Internet users, especially those that you have something in common with.

With a fairly large number of social networking websites, including MySpace, having over a millions users, there is a good chance that you could not only make new friends, but find Internet users that would be interested in visiting your online website, especially if that website is your personal website. When joining an online networking community, you should be given your own profile page. On this page you could not only describe yourself, your online website. By mentioning what your personal online webpage is all about and providing a link, you should receive a number of new visitors.

As previously mentioned, social networking websites can benefit all website owners, but especially those who are looking to make a profit with their websites. This can be done one of two ways, by selling something or by relying on revenue from advertising. If you have a website that selling products or services, you may find it a little bit easier to use social networking sites to your advantage. This is because, if you wish, you could do product or service spotlights. Each day, week, or month, you could showcase one of the products or services that your website sells. This could either be done right on your profile page or on a blog page, which is provided by most social networking websites.

If you are using your online website to make money with advertising programs, such as affiliate programs or Google Adsense, you may need to approach social networking websites in a different matter. Since you will not necessarily have a particular product or service to focus on, you will need to approach these websites as if they were personal websites. If your website discusses being a dog owner, it may be a good idea to state your love for dogs in your profile. After doing so, it would be acceptable and not necessarily considered spam to add a link to your online website. As with all other types of online websites, social networking websites should help to increase the number of page views your website receives. In most cases, more page views mean more clicks which means money for you.

As you can easily see, there are a number of different ways that you can promote your online website, no matter what type of website you have or what you use it for. By keeping the above mentioned points in mind, you should be able to see an increase in your page views, in no time at all.

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special.inexpensiveexposure.com On Monday, August 10th the Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch kicked off their 11th annual Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California. The three-day conference opened and closed with two training days on Monday and Friday. There were over 70 sessions, covering a wide spectrum of Internet marketing industry including Pay-Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, duplicate content, social media, link building, and video optimization to name a few. This massive conference also included a two-day expo floor with over a hundred companies. Networking the Expo Hall I had the privilege to attend Day 1 on Tuesday, August 11. The day opened with keynote speech by Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University and author of Here Comes Everybody. From there, the knowledge-hungry group of marketers flooded into the Exposition Hall, where Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask booths were on the front line. Through the hall, sales reps and HR recruiters waited patiently to offer their pitches and pass out their advertising toys. Findoloy, a smaller search engine, was giving away free massages all day. Other booths were the Online Marketing Institute, Bruce Clay Inc., iProspect, Facebook and Webmaster Radio. Turning Social Media Into ROI One of the more interesting classes I attended was entitled “Turning the Social Web Into Real ROI” with Sean Heywood, Claudia Virgilio and Rogelio (Ro) Choy on the a panel of speakers and mediator …

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Join the Social Data Revolution! • weigend.com Andreas Weigend and Reid Hoffman have a conversation including thoughts on LinkedIn, the future of job hunting, and the following •People are participants / Interaction •Psychological ecosystem •Recommendation to other people’s identity •Everybody is a small business •Lead generation (of someone who looks me up) vs. traditional advertising •Looking at people in common: helps with decision making •Use the network as a lens •Social construction •On notion of asymmetry •Free agent nation Indeed, not your ordinary INTERVIEW! The Social Data Revolution is here to stay… Reid Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. Hoffman is best known as the founder of LinkedIn, a social network used primarily for business connections and job searching. Hoffman was born in Stanford, California, and grew up in Berkeley, California. He attended high school at The Putney School, and then matriculated at Stanford University, where he won a Marshall Scholarship and a Dinkelspiel Award. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in symbolic systems, he attended Oxford University, graduating with a master’s degree in philosophy. His first job was a summer internship with Inglenook, a Napa Valley winery. After working at Apple Computer and Fujitsu, Hoffman co-founded his first company, SocialNet.com. While at Socialnet, Hoffman was a member of the board of directors at the founding of PayPal, an electronic money …

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Social media marketing is certainly a powerful marketing tool. This strategy has proven its effectiveness for quite a long time. Social media marketing has been an excellent marketing tool even under the worst economic conditions. Today social media marketing is said to be “the best way to spread good news under the worst conditions”.  From getting links to your website to attaining international exposure to your business, social media marketing has an important role in the marketing strategy of any business. Like any other marketing strategy, social media marketing also requires proper planning and appropriate execution of the plan. This marketing strategy without proper planning and execution will be a complete waste of time and may ruin your business too. This article will help you to plan and execute social media marketing in the right way.

The Non-Spammy Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking of your website to the popular social networks like dig and stumbleupon is a great strategy to boost the traffic flow. Many people do a mistake by over-doing social bookmarking with a single user account, which will result in the bookmarks getting flagged as spam. Ignoring this warning and continuing this activity will eventually end up with your IP address getting blocked. Hence you won’t be able to use this strategy from that particular IP address. Moreover, all the time spent in bookmarking your website will be wasted. Hence it is always good to have different user accounts to bookmark your website over a prolonged period of time.

The Well Customized Social Media Profiles

Social media websites like facebook are greatly leveraged today for the marketing campaigns. You must have noted that President Obama made use of this strategy in his election campaigns. As every social media marketer is getting into these social networking sites, it is very much important to highlight your profile. Thankfully, there are lots of customization options available with these social networking websites to highlight your profiles. Another important thing to be noted is to create a fully complete profile with your real name and a few links to the recommended products in your website.

Active Participation in the Social Networks

Social media marketing is not a one time process. For instance, let’s take the example of marketing through the social networks like facebook. To get noticed in the social networking crowd, your profile should be active. All the social media profiles should be updated with some content frequently. Fresh, updated content is always loved by the search engine bots. Active participation also includes forum postings, commenting and participation in polls.

Getting Professional assistance for Social Media Marketing

If you are unaware of the right way to plan and execute social media marketing, there are many professionals ready to help you. The social media marketing services provided by them will save your time. Moreover, with their expertise in social media marketing, they can create a great social media marketing plan that best suits your websites marketing needs.

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One of the social network script options that you have available to you when building a brand new social networking website is Phpfox. Is Phpfox the best social network script or social network site creation tool out there?

Phpfox is a powerful social network script that can enable nearly any webmaster to create their own unique niche-based social networking website. Thanks to the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, new social networking sites are springing up all over the place, as savvy internet marketers discover the profiting potential of having a niche-based social networking site of their very own. What are the benefits of a social network site? It’s simple, really:

- Nearly all of the content is created by your members,

- All of the content is promoted by your members as they invite their friends to the site,

- Members provide you with marketing research as well as demographic info just by filling out their profiles.

The Phpfox script is capable of providing your social network site with all of this necessary functionality and a great deal more. When you research social network script options like phpfox for your own uses, it is important to read reviews from developers, programmers and webmasters to let you know how well other people have found a certain social network script to work for them.

By using phpfox, you can participate in a large and active forum full of members who are willing to help you get started. This forum can be a godsend when it comes to setting up a social network script like phpfox. You can get a lot of help here, and you can also find out more information about add on scripts and modifications that can help you better utilize the phpfox social network script.

Most social network script options are difficult to install and implement, but this is not true when it comes to phpfox. The installation of this social network script is relatively easy, utilizing only three basic steps -

- Create a database,

- Upload your script files and chmod them according to the directions,

- Visit the installation page and put in your information. The information you need is your database name, your username and your password. Once this is done, just run it and the installation file will do the rest of the work for you.

Of course, if you do not want to bother with the installation process yourself, then the Phpfox company will do it for you, but it requires that you pay a nominal fee. After the installation, you should be able to log directly into the admin panel where you can choose a template, and the rest is up to you. Phpfox even offers a template that mirrors MySpace almost exactly, if that is what you are trying to achieve with your social network site and social network script.

Phpfox is an excellent social network script that can work wonders for you if you are trying to build a community network site. Just keep in mind that you have other options as well that are worth exploring.

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LinkedIn, which is a network site specifically focus on professional connections, is considered to be the most efficient website to boost a business in just a short period of time. Founded in December 2002 by REED Hoffman and present LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, it is mainly used for professional networking. In the said networking site there is what we call LinkedIn Groups which allows users to establish new business relationships by joining alumni, industry, or professional and other relevant groups. LinkedIn groups can be created in any subjects and by any member of LinkedIn. Some groups are focused groups dealing with a narrow domain or industry whereas others are very broad and generic in nature.

LinkedIn Groups are created by members through assessing and sorting their profile and see if they have a common interest. Initially, LinkedIn only had the very basic features enabling users to create groups and invite people to join. Those users joining groups were able to show what groups they belong to on their profiles to get some extra visibility to the groups. Thus, it means that the groups are formed mainly for the purpose of demonstrating several communities where someone could belong to.

Since LinkedIn members are gathered, well, with not necessarily by common interest rather professional backgrounds and , forming and finding a small or big businesses is a lot easier for them. If you will analyze it carefully, forming business is having various connections starting from an independent firm to joining several other groups. Being a member of LinkedIn Groups would be a good option for an online marketer. Why? people who possibly are in the same field and interest as they are.

Since letting registered users to keep a list of contact details of individuals they know and count on in business is LinkedIn’s sole purpose, this is actually the process of forming connections and “a group of connections” plays an important role in online marketing entrepreneurs. Starting from members of the first degree up to the third degree friends, lots of connections can be acquired. With members having known several connections, LinkedIn groups could give an interactive several referrals. It is not that hard to look for people suitable for the job you offer and to post jobs with the use of the number of connections in LinkedIn groups. Also, targeting potential leads for your business will be easy. Thus, it can lead you to have a good stream of income.

If you are a marketer using LinkedIn groups, target markets are even broader for you because information about business is in a shot gun form of advertisement and not a rifle. your target market and expand the visibility of your services and products. Domains in advertising the product or services can potentially reach wider territory in the sites of the internet world.

LinkedIn Groups in online marketing is an effective tool in getting more attention and interested members. Through it, there is an increase of adverstisement which means many will be aware of what is being promoted. Then, if there’s an increase awareness, leads would also increase. Thus, LinkedIn Groups are really great tools to utilize for entrepreneurs to build a stream of income.

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I need a slogan for my online marketing business. We are a full service online marketing company. Our services include: SEO, PPC, social media marketing, web design, blogging, online reputation management, email marketing, etc. The name of my company is SearchDog Marketing and I’m in desperate need for a slogan. Please Help!!

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When radio stations first went on the air, people were introduced to a new media for their entertainment, such as movies, magazines, television and the Internet. It did not take long for companies to realize the potential of what is now called “traditional media marketing” to generate brand exposure. For at least half of the past decade, people have been using social networking sites and reading blogs for entertainment. Recently, companies started realizing the unique potential of advertising in social media. In fact, not too long ago, “social media marketing” became a coined phrase according to Google Trends. In 2009, the phrase’s popularity has already grown 4 times faster than it did all of last year.

There is something different about social media marketing though; communicating through social media is extremely cost-efficient and the process involves far fewer steps than other forms of advertising. Both a commercial on television and a blog written by your company have the potential to reach audiences globally at the same time. At the speed that social media marketing is becoming a social norm for companies, in the near future, it will be common for most companies to be involved in some sort of social media. Today, if a company is operating without an e-mail address or a Web site, they seem out of touch. Soon we can expect the same for companies who choose not to participate in social media. There are many pros and cons to social media. The following is a list of pros and cons to help your company determine if social media is right for you. The pros

Social media marketing helps improve the relevancy and organic search engine results of your company’s brand. Your company can reach target audiences that traditional marketing cannot. Social media marketing has become one of the simplest ways to humanize your company, while at the same time generating brand loyalty. Creates client interaction, making it easier to tailor your products and services to your customers by listening to their needs and concerns. Offers another way to learn more about your target audience and gain new target audience prospects. Social media marketing is extremely cost-efficient (even when outsourced to a marketing agency) when compared to traditional media marketing. Adds transparency to your company, offering consumers an open perspective of your business.

The Cons

Social Media Marketing demands commitment; once you have an audience, it is up to you to cultivate them and keep them interested. With the aspect of transparency, anything you publish is open to the public. Without the ability to repress reader’s comments you are open for potential scrutiny. ROI is delayed most of the time. Social media is viral, but it still takes time. This is something that should be thought of as a long term marketing effort when deciding if your company should engage in social media.

With all of that being said, simply publishing a Facebook Fan Page and posting a few random tweets about your company isn’t going to get your company the viral exposure for which you’d hope. Before beginning your social media marketing campaign, you need to formulate a plan, choose your target audience, decide what each social network will address and set your goals. One of your goals should be to spread knowledge about your company and your industry, the kind of knowledge that your followers will feel inclined to spread to their friends. For examples of social media efforts you can view Agency Creative’s social media links below:
http://www.facebook.com/AgencyCreative
http://www.twitter.com/AgencyCreative

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