Social Media Marketing - Tips and Hints

Social Media focuses on the interaction of the public forum to a particular item within your website to hopefully get people to share it with their social networks. To create this interaction, site owners will put people friendly features such as blogs, Q and A, adding comment options, message boards, video, or including links to relevant sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.

Sites that practice social media allow people to share their opinions, experiences, perspectives, and connect with others as well as the business. The idea is to inform and entice potential customers.

Having viewers interact with your company builds a bond that leads to loyal customers. Last year was described as the "Social Media Advertising Boom", and this year, the money predicted to be spent on social media marketing is predicted to pass 2 billion. With more than 80% of all businesses that employee 100 or more people, practicing social media marketing, the numbers of small to medium sized businesses trying to build their social networks has skyrocketed over the past few years.

Facebook has quickly gained the title of "Social Media King", and has proven to be a very effective, sophisticated tool for the small to medium sized business. Facebook has become so important that some businesses are now spending as much time and money optimizing their Facebook page as they are with their own website. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your Facebook is an important key to getting those higher search engine results.

There are many businesses that can help you optimize your website and your Facebook page for a fee, but here are a few tips that you can do right now to help optimize your Facebook page.

>Chose the best Facebook name and do not change it
>Use the 'About' box to place keyword rich text about your business
>Use the 'Info' tab to include important keywords, text, and high priority links
>Create 'Static FBML' boxes and tabs to place lengthy content and other links
>Post direct links to your website or other relevant sites in your pages stream
>Add photos with captions, events with descriptions, and a discussion forum
>Select "everyone" in your privacy settings so anyone can see your page
>Include links to your Facebook on all of your sites

And don't forget to include a Facebook blog and links back to the blog on your website. You can also include links to related articles (they don't have to be yours). Facebook is also a great place to share photos, but make sure you tag the people included in your photos. It's also a great place to share YouTube videos.

Remember, SEO is not only wall posts but status updates, links, notes, and tags. When you create you Facebook page, one of the most important components is to be human. Start conversations, ask questions, and interact. To do this, know your audience and target market; age, gender, interests, etc. Work on increasing your number of fans by getting people engaged in your page by customizing with articles, blogs, discussions, reviews, pictures, videos, and anything else that would construct a persona of your company as a whole and you as a person.

By Bryan Keller