As a result of a recent inquiry from a client, I compiled this overview of some of the biggest and most popular social media sites currently operating on the web, along with some commentary on how the client might incorporate these sites into their marketing strategy. Enjoy.
Marketing Approaches for Social Media
Promoting your website on the sites we’ve provided below is an excellent idea if you’re starting your website. Most social media sites are free to join, making them great advertising options to investigate as you work to attract and retain a steady stream of users.
Maintaining all these social media websites with up-to-date business information can be pretty time-consuming, so once your website has a following of regular users, you are probably better off developing the content on your site to keep people coming back.
Building up your social media following and keeping them informed can be fun if you can do it.
Taking full advantage of most social media platforms will require a fair amount of ingenuity, but the payoff will be worth it when you see your readership and following grow.
Sites for Promoting Your Business on Social Media
“Twitter is a service that enables people to keep in touch with one another, whether they work together or not, through the exchange of short, frequent answers to the query, “What are you doing?”
With Twitter, you can have many people “follow” your microblog. Since Oprah mentioned Twitter in her program, this social media platform has exploded in popularity.
Engaging your followers on Twitter is easy if you can write intriguing 140-character messages called Tweets.
Digg
Digg is “a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web,” and it “surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users,” meaning that it includes content from both the most popular websites and the most obscure blogs.
While making a Digg account and submitting your exciting content is an excellent first step, you likely won’t see a significant increase in traffic until you can convince other Digg users to contribute your content. Keep sharing your great work, and keep your fingers crossed that some other users will “Digg” it.
del.icio.us
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that “greatly improves how people discover, remember, and share online by allowing them to tag, save, manage, and share web pages from a single source.”
Bookmarks can be stored and managed in Delicious and shared with other users. The best method to get your site’s content noticed is to add it to Delicious and hope that other people will do the same, just as they would on Digg.
“Reddit is a social news website where users can post links to content on the Internet, and other users can vote up or down on those links, affecting how prominently they appear on the Reddit home page.”
Reddit is very similar to the popular website Digg, but its content is usually focused on current events.
Technorati
“As the leading blog search engine and most comprehensive source of information on the blogosphere, we index over 1.5 million new blog posts in real-time and introduce millions of readers to blog and social media content,” Technorati says.
Once you create an account with them, this famous blog search engine will crawl your site. Check out their frequently asked questions website for information on how to get your blog crawled.
Squidoo
“Squidoo is a popular publishing platform and community that allows you to easily create online “lenses,” which are pages that collect everything you know about your subject of interest and snap it all into focus, much like flyers, signposts, or overview articles.
Squidoo is one of the top 50 websites in the United States and one of the top 200 most-visited websites globally.
With Squidoo, you can write a blog post about any topic on just one page. In this situation, you should try to design a beautiful one-page flyer to advertise your website and label it appropriately. Squidoo users looking for information on your “lenses” subject will see recommendations for your “lens” on the results page.
You can use LinkedIn to find, connect with, and collaborate with the qualified professionals you need to work with to achieve your goals because it is an interconnected network of experienced professionals worldwide, representing 170 sectors and 200 countries.
This site caters primarily to working professionals seeking to expand their professional networks; as such, it may not align with the objectives of your website’s marketing team.
Newsvine
Newsvine is an instantaneous representation of what the world is talking about because regular people like you constantly update it.
Users of Newsvine are encouraged to create and post their original news articles for community voting. When you sign up for Newsvine, you’ll be granted a personal column to publish and promote your content.
Wikipedia
Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has increased to become one of the most significant reference websites, with an estimated 684 million visitors annually by 2008. “Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all over the world; anyone can edit it.”
If you haven’t heard of Wikipedia, you’re presumably just getting started with the World Wide Web. The vast majority of Google search results now include a related Wikipedia article. This demonstrates the significance of having a Wikipedia page dedicated to your company. Remember that a post will be removed immediately if it doesn’t add value.
Try to submit an entry about your own company or website as though you were an objective third party with nothing to benefit from. Following these guidelines makes your post less likely to be removed immediately.
StumbleUpon
We deliver high-quality pages matched to your preferences as soon as you click Stumble! These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 6 million+ other web surfers with interests similar to yours. Rating these sites, you like automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover extraordinary places your friends recommend.
StumbleUpon users can share the websites they like as they browse the web by clicking the “+1” button. The next step is for StumbleUpon users to vote on the page and suggest it to their friends. A page’s popularity among StumbleUpon users is based on the number of “thumbs up” votes.
If you sign up for an account and recommend your content, you can get more people to view your site from StumbleUpon.
“Facebook facilitates communication and sharing with those you care about.
Facebook is fantastic for staying in touch with loved ones, and you can also use it to publicize your business or upcoming events by creating groups that other users can join.
Flickr
Almost without a doubt, “Flickr” is the most superior online picture management and sharing service available today.
Great place to promote your company if you have photos related to it to share with the world and get feedback from others at the same time.
wikiHow
“WikiHow is an online, community-edited how-to manual in the making.”
WikiHow can be a fantastic way to get your name in front of people interested in your industry if you take the time to write a how-to article on a topic related to your business.
Yahoo! 360
“A personal space you can show off to your loved ones.”
Like social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, Yahoo 360 allows users to build profiles for themselves or their businesses.
MySpace
Make a group on MySpace and discuss whatever you like with your expanding pals!.”
MySpace was the first social networking site, but you might have difficulty getting your message across if you’re not a singer, filmmaker, or comedian.
Put This In
“AddThis is the most popular social saving and sharing tool on the web. By facilitating bookmarking and sharing to popular social locations, we aid website publishers and bloggers in expanding their reach across the web.
Although Add This is not a social media platform in and of itself, it can be considered a facilitator for those interested in expanding their marketing efforts into the realm of social media.
To make it easy for your visitors to bookmark and share the content on your site with their preferred social media and bookmarking services, you can create an account with Add This and download your own “Share” button (like the one at the bottom of this page).
If you use the “Share” button provided by Add This, you can also track when and where other users have shared your website’s material.
Read also: The best way to Explode on Twitter
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