If you’re in doubt as to whether or not social media marketing should be part of your company’s online marketing or search marketing mix in 2009, I highly suggest giving Todd Malicoat’s 9 Reasons You Need Social Media Marketing in 2009 a good read.
Social marketing is the new search engine optimization. Reciprocal voting is the new reciprocal linking. It offers a fairly low barrier to entry, and the opportunity to drive a TON of traffic in a short period of time. Even more importantly, social media has become a cornerstone of the strategy for launching sites, or improving their link popularity.
I’m going to be writing a little more today on social media and site launching, as I’ve found that not only mixing social media into a smart site launch can drive traffic, but also build a membership base or customer base to your business before it even opens to the public; think the lines outside of Walmart at 4 am on Black Friday. Social media marketing can build links, brand equity, brand loyalty and community and when done correctly, can give you the upperhand over your competition.
More from Todd on How to Pitch Social Media Marketing Internally in 6 Easy Steps:
1. Create Positive ROI on keyword set for a PPC campaign.
2. Explain lifetime value of a converting customer that came from that keyword set
3. Sell the value of SEO as a long term, less expensive form of PPC on above mentioned keywords. Here’s some help.
4 . Demonstrate the need and importance of links to search engine rankings.
5 . Explain the value and process for obtaining links (and how much these would cost).
6 . Introduce the idea of linkbaiting and social media marketing.
BTW, I do not think that Google’s crackdown on really bad paid linking or linking networks is the end all of link building. Major newspapers, web guides and blogs link to clients who build smart link building and content distribution initiatives – they always have and still do, especially if you can leverage the client strategy in an effective, useful or resourceful manner.
Adding a social aspect however, does in my opinion increase the probability that an authority site or media publication will link to you. But good old fashioned link building can work as well now as it did in 2000 … the biggest problem is publishers now know the value of those links!
