There are many choices for a business owner to use in promoting their business. Social media marketing is a strategy that works with just about every business. Use this to increase the effectiveness of your other marketing strategies.

Here are the seven forms of social media marketing that are used by businesses today. Choose the ones that best fit your business and your targeted customer.

1. Blogging: Use blogging as your central content strategy. Integrate YouTube into your blog, automatically Tweet with each posting, and display your posts on your Facebook and LinkedIn.
2. Twitter: Post short updates with this micro blogging tool. Use Twitter to engage in conversations, link to your blog and to other interesting articles. Twitter is limited to 140 character posts.
3. Facebook: This social networking platform has become the top business networking site where businesses can connect with your audience, interact with fans, post videos, discuss topics and place social ads. Ideal for B2C marketing.
4. LinkedIn: This is your professional networking tool. Here you can form alliances, share knowledge, attract new customers and cement your company brand. Very strong tool for B2B marketing.
5. YouTube: Create short educational videos that relate to your niche. Videos are great way to reach and engage your target group. Embed these videos on your blog and website. Use attention grabbing titles and reference your website URL and then wait for the videos to go viral. Build up a Youtube channel that lists all your videos in one place.
6. FlicR: This is your photo sharing strategy. Name your photo images with keywords and they will come up highly in searches particularly on Yahoo. The best images are original, creative and professional photos that appeal to your target market. Allow your photos to be freely used as long as you receive credit in the form of a link with specific anchor text.
7. Digg is a social news site where content is submitted and voted on by the community. You can occasionally submit your own material, but you need to do this sparingly and interspersed with other sites you find appealing. Popular content can create excellent referral traffic.

The great part of social media marketing is your ability to track results. Analytics will give you the ability to measure referral traffic and links to your company website. Social media is the new frontier in business marketing and many companies are reaping the rewards.

Social Media Marketing really went main stream in 2008. This is according to Google Trends. This was when many “early adopter” businesses began implementing social media in their marketing campaigns. But will social media marketing work for all businesses?

When the Internet went public in the early 90s, many businesses were slow to adopt this new media into their marketing. It was the early adopters that took full advantage and are now leaders in the Internet world.

Today if a company doesn’t have a website or use email, they will have a hard time reaching their market or even being taken seriously as a business. Today only about half of all small businesses even have a website. How does this translate into using social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the new frontier, much the same way as the Internet was in the early 90s. The Internet replaced traditional media (Newspaper ads, print Yellow pages, direct mail). I am not saying websites will be going away the way print newspapers have, but social media has become the best way to reach and interact with your best buyers.

There are still businesses asking “Are my customers are looking for me on the Internet?” The answer to this is a loud YES… no matter what type of business they are in.

The new question is “Are my customers using and reading social media?” The answer today is most likely. Very soon this will turn into a loud YES. Now is the time to work social media into your marketing strategies.

Customer reviews need to be an important part of your marketing effort. This is especially true for local businesses. Local directories such as the Google 7-Pack use the number of reviews as an important measure of which listings to display. Because you are asking for customer reviews, your staff becomes more focused on providing an even higher level of service, which translates into happier customers.

This gives prospective customers the “social proof” they are looking for about what to expect in doing business with your company.

How can you encourage reviews?

1. Ask for a review with each order. This can be an email sent as a thank you for their recent order, include a link to a review site where they can complete a review. An alternative to this is to follow up with a postcard asking for a review of your product or service.
2. Incentives: Offer a discount on a future order or some free offer if they will take the time to review your service. Some experts caution against this since it could be viewed as a form of a paid review.
3. Contest: Offer to enter everyone that completes a review into a drawing for something of value. This should be for any review (good or bad). The idea is to solicit feedback that will help your business improve.
4. Consistency: It is better to have a consistent stream of reviews rather than a bunch of reviews that come in all at one time. Set up a system that regularly asks for a review.

Not all reviews will be positive, no matter how great the service is that you offer. You will find though that the vast majority of reviews to be good… providing you do provide a quality service.

If you are concerned about potential reviews, then this may be a sign that you may need to make some changes in how you do business.

The rise of blogs, social networks, social bookmarking and other social media has created a new source for traffic for websites. A top story on Digg can drive much more traffic than a top search engine ranking. This has created a new process called Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Social media optimization is a form of word of mouth marketing through the use of social networking, social bookmarking, and media sharing (photo, video) websites. The essence of SMO is giving people a reason to visit and link to your site because of great original content.

Use social media to build your brand and your reputation, not to sell products. Brand yourself as a leader. Your brand is what you represent, what you care about and your connection to others. You want to be the unique and persuasive voice in your market. Your goal is to create a cultural following.

Social media optimization is different than search engine optimization. Social media markets directly to your target audience and search engine optimization markets to the search engines. SEO is about building rankings while SMO is about building a community.

Today we live in a world where you can’t hide. The world will become more transparent… not less. There is no more lurking in the shadows. Social media shines a light on everything and everybody.

The online marketing landscape has changed tremendously in just the past 5 years. It is getting increasingly chaotic. The old style of controlling your market is dead. It is about interacting and conversing with your market at a grassroots level.

Bloggers use Twitter much more than does the general population according to a 2009 study by Penn, Schoen, & Berland Associates. The study found only 14% of the general population is using Twitter while 73% of all bloggers will use Twitter. Small business bloggers (self employed) have the highest use of Twitter at 88%. The general population included interviews with over 1000 over 18 Internet users.

How small business bloggers use Twitter?

• 85% Promote my blog
• 73% Market my business
• 69% To bring interesting links to light
• 63% Interact with readers of my blog
• 61% To understand what people are buzzing about
• 52% Keep up with news events
• 48% For research
• 41% Interact with companies

Most of the small business bloggers have linked their Twitter account with their blog. 52% of all bloggers surveyed syndicate their blog posts to their Twitter Account. 61% of small business blogs are set to automatically send a Tweet to their Twitter account with each new blog posting.

26% of bloggers who also use Twitter say that the service has eaten into the time they spend updating their traditional blogs – though 65% say it has had no effect.

These results are similar to a 2008 study by Pew Internet that found 11 percent of adults in the US who use the Internet claim to have used Twitter. They found the adoption rate of Twitter to be highest with 25-34 year old Internet users. The median age for Twitter users was found to be 31.

18-24 : 19%
25-34 : 20%
35-44 : 10%
45-54 : 5%
55-64 : 4%
65 + : 2%

Social media is like having a conversation over the back fence with a neighbor. It’s like getting an unexpected phone call from an old high school friend and catching up. It is laid back and conversational. Yet many companies who enter this arena don’t get it and try too hard. Here are the common mistakes marketers make when entering social media marketing.

1. Self Promoting: Promoting yourself and not providing value is a huge mistake. As you enter into the social media world it is about participation and entering into the conversations. We all see companies that enter into Twitter, blogging and social networking that spend their energy marketing themselves. This is a sure way to get people to run the other direction.
2. Not Listening: Social media is supposed to be conversational. This means two or more people listening and then interacting. If your focus is on broadcasting, then you are not engaging at a social level. Building relationships requires listening to understand the other person’s point of view.
3. Not Conversational: Don’t try and control and force your point of view. Your goal is to listen, build trust and understand the other person’s viewpoint. Yes, you want to voice your point of view, but avoid criticizing and offending. Avoid being too formal, boring and proper. Interact and let your personality show.
4. Too much participation: If you try and participate in too many forms of social media your participation becomes spotty and inconsistent. You may experiment with a wide range of tools. Find the few areas you really enjoy and are good at. Settle in on your favorites and focus. You will enjoy it more and build better relationships.
5. Giving up after a short time: Social media marketing is about creating and sustaining lasting relationships. It takes time and many conversations. Social media is not the instant solution. Be prepared for a long term commitment or don’t do it at all.

Businesses will continuing moving away from traditional marketing and toward Internet marketing. Many more traditional brick and mortar companies will begin tapping into web marketing. I have dusted off my crystal ball and am looking ahead to 2010 and how the web will change these small businesses.

1. More local websites: 53% of Small Businesses will have a website by December 2010. The number of small businesses that have a website has grown from 36% (November 2007) to 45% (August 2009) according to a studies by Discover Business card and Rasmussen Reports. This trend will accelerate as small businesses watch the increasing trend of local search from handheld mobile devices such as Smart Phones. This same report says that 47 percent of consumers say they are more likely to use a business if they have a web site.
2. Video will continue to grow: The website YouTube has 35% more video searches than the #2 search engine Yahoo has total searches (October 2009). 84.4% percent of online visitors watch web videos with the average viewer  (October 2009). The price of producing a video production continues to decrease. The price of Flip video cameras are under $200 making video cheap and easy to make. The standard video will be about 4 minutes and will be used in social media marketing and to visually demonstrate products in action.
3. Blog websites to increase: More companies will move their primary website to blog platforms such as Wordpress.org. RSS feeds are a powerful SEO tool and the search engine friendly structure makes these blog websites a natural. Blogs lend themselves better to social media marketing. Adding Wordpress plugins such as Sociable or reTweet make integration into social media easy.
4. Relationship Marketing: On the web, size doesn’t matter, relationships matter. How marketing is done is changing at an ever increasing rate. Traditional marketing broadcasts a message. Businesses will move more into social media marketing where they can engage their targeted customer and interact with them. Blog marketing will continue to grow but will become more integrated with other forms of social media.
5. Polarization in Social Media: The over 40 crowd will settle in on just a few forms of social media to interact and get their information. This older crowd will try and distance themselves from the “noise” and chatter that comes with many forms of social media like Twitter. The younger consumers will increase their use of social media on all fronts. Businesses marketing to younger consumers will have to step up their entry into social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing is used to influence perception of your company or your brand. It is used to  interact with people who could be interested in your products or services. Use social media to  bring traffic to your website and through links and to gain better search engine rankings. You can use social media to do some or all of these.

Before you jump into using Facebook or Twitter, you should take some time to plan what it is you want to accomplish. How should you launch your social media initiative?

1. Purpose: What is your topic? What are you trying to accomplish? Get inbound links? Sign-up subscribers? Improve brand perception? Settle on one primary purpose and 2-3 secondary ones. Now firm these into measurable goals such as attract 500 links to your company blog within 6 months.
2. Audience: What do you know about the people most interested in what you have to offer? This goes well beyond age, education level and income bracket. What interests them? What are their passions? Where do they spend their time reading, learning and discussing?
3. Where: Start by being a detective. Track down where the conversations are happening. Are they on blogs? In forums? Are discussions happening on social networks? Are answers being sought on YouTube or perhaps LinkedIn Answers? These locations are where you will want to start your campaign.
4. Participate: Each day join the dialog and become part of the community. The amount of influence you exert will be based on how actively you join in the conversations and contribute. Comment on blogs, join in the forum discussions, follow and Tweet on Twitter and be active in the social networks. Set-up your own pages, blog marketing and YouTube channels.
5. Monitoring: Set-up your own listening or monitoring system. Use Google Alerts (free) or some of the more sophisticated paid tools to track brand mentions, blog conversations, social media or tweets. If your goals are around SEO, measure and monitor links and rankings. What you measure and monitor will be based on you purpose and goals. Measure your progress toward your goals.

Many companies are joining social media with enthusiasm as way to reach new customers, but how do you measure a payoff? How can you determine whether you are getting a return on your investment? According to an August 2009 survey, 84% of marketers aren’t measuring ROI on their social media marketing efforts. 40% of the respondents didn’t believe it could be measured.

Many companies that are measuring success of their campaigns are watching for direct measurable results from their campaigns. These will show improvements, but don’t translatedirectly into ROI. These include metrics like.

1. Facebook fans.
2. Followers on Twitter
3. ReTweets
4. Brand mentions or brand searches
5. Page views
6. Unique visitors
7. Time spent on site
8. Search ranking improvement
9. Link acquisition rate
10. Comments and trackbacks

These are great indicators that show a campaign is having success, but they fail to show if they are yielding bottom line results. Senior managers and business owners are looking for financial impact. ROI needs to be tied back to business metrics such as increases in sales, decreases in expenses and profitability.

The best way to do this is to create graphs of the social media indicators that are showing results over time and then overlay these results with key financial results.

As an example, if you can measure an increase of brand mentions by week for the past year against the weekly sales on the company website, you may be able to see a direct correlation to an increase in mentions with an increase in sales. The key is to overlay results from various campaigns to see which are having an impact.

A good presentation of how this works is done by Oliver Blanchard Basics of Social Media ROI.

Companies everywhere are jumping into Social Media Marketing to engage potential customers in conversations.  Social media marketing typically uses a combination of blogging, social networks, YouTube, Twitter, social bookmarking and more. What many don’t realize is that social media marketing can be used to quickly raise organic SEO search results for their business website.

Organic SEO uses keyword phrases prominently on the web page itself (headings,   body text, hyperlinks, etc.). This though is only part of the organic SEO process. To be effective a good link popularity strategy must also be applied. Links from social media are among the most powerful available.

Use these strategies to attract social media links.

1. Begin by adding a blog to your website. Writing interesting and original posts will be a natural link magnet from other blogs. Bloggers will naturally link to source articles that they reference in their blogs. Links to your blog which is part of your website, will benefit the entire website.
2. Content is king: Adding a blog to your website allows you to regularly add keyword rich pages to your website. More content pages on your website will give the search engines more to index and bring in more search traffic. More content will also provide more potential for attracting links.
3. Articles and white papers: Post authoritative articles and whitepapers on your website. Provide data, observations of your industry or market, make predictions and offer advice. These kinds of articles are powerful attractors of links.
4. Encourage Bookmarking: Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious are highly authoritative bookmarking sites which can dramatically improve search engine rankings if used properly. Add plugins to your blog that allow easy bookmarking by visitors.