Social Media Marketing - Beginners Guide To Domination

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Starting a business or building an existing business can be a difficult task. The one thing that is most important to becoming successful is advertising. Large companies have huge advertising budgets so that they can buy time on television and radio or take out quarter, half or full page ads in newspapers and magazines. They spend millions every year vying for the consumer's attention.

With technology the advertising market has been changing. Now even small companies and home based businesses can get their products and services out into the public market place without spending a fortune. In fact for those willing to put the effort into research, marketing on the internet can be done at no cost to the business owner.

Are you asking yourself what is social media?

Don't worry, you are not the only one that is still clueless, even though social media has blown up there are still a ton of people who have no idea. Social Media are websites that the content is primarily written by the users instead of by the paid employees of the organization.

Social Network Marketing - A method of marketing that uses tools like email, word of mouth, niche marketing and viral marketing to increase web presence for the product or service being advertised.

• Some examples of social networking are attending the business mixer given by your local chamber, taking part in internet forums that are related to the product or service that you provide and creating a Facebook or MySpace page, not profile, so that others can become fans and spread your name to others in their online community.
  

These days a lot of businesses are purchasing SMM packages to achieve success with .

VIRAL Marketing - Creating a "BUZZ" about your brand, an upcoming event or a new product launch will attract attention and become viral advertising.

The buzz is what makes SMM work!

• It sends your message from user to user at little or no cost, because the word will travel from mouth to mouth.

If you can master the art of creating Viral Marketing Content, that can be monetized, then you are going to dominate your market place and one day end up on the front page of a magazine.

• There are many venues available to promote a business brand. Twitter, MySpace and Facebook allow your customers to become fans. Each time a customer becomes a fan a message is passed on to everyone on their friends list building your brand by volumes.

Social Media Marketing also known as SMM is the use of a social network as an advertising tool to promote your product or service. By using online communities, blogs, wikis or other interactive internet media for marketing it is possible to reach a lot of people without spending a lot of money.

Using interactive media allows the consumer to ask questions, provide valuable feedback and allow the business owner to create a helping relationship. SMM Company Services are usually very affordable and quiet powerful, one could not do what they do for the amount of money invested. Consumers are more likely to become vested in a product or service if they feel that their input is valuable and they are respected for that input.

Building Successful Campaigns:

1. To build a successful SMM campaign these "Fan Pages" need to be conversational not fully controlled.
   
2. They need to allow for user participation.
   
3. If the user is not fully engaged and treated with respect the SMM campaign can backfire on the company that created it.
   
4. Put yourself in your target users place when designing your marketing strategy.

The Top 20 Social Media Sites In 2009

1. YouTube - The top video sharing website and one of the fastest growing websites ever.
   
2. MySpace - Still a powerhouse in the social networking community.
   
3. Facebook - The up and coming champion for the past three years of social networking, and I am expecting wonderful things in the near future.
   
4. Beebo - Video and social networking website.
   
5. Black Planet - Large black online community.
   
6. Tagged - Social networking platform.
   
7. Imeem - Social network for sharing music, video and photos.
8. Hi5 . Another social networking website.
   
9. Orkut - A social networking website, owned by the famous Google.
   
10. Digg - One of the most popular social bookmarking websites, sharing and discovering links.
11. LinkedIn - Professional networking website.
    
12. Ning - Create your own social networking community.
13. Stumbleupon - Sharing and discovering links, social bookmarking website.
    
14. Friendster - Social networking platform.
    
15. Buzznet - Pop culture social networking.
16. Multiply - Media and file sharing.
17. Twitter - The mac daddy of Microblogging platforms.
18. Cyworld - A powerful ocial networking website.
    
19. Netlog - Custom social networking blogs.
    
20. Livejournal - A similar style of social networking blogging website.
    

However it is not necessary to save up large sums of money to achieve the same outcome if you are a home based business or a
small business owner. Creating your own blog and getting your message out to the internet public only takes dedication and perseverance. The
choice is yours as to how much money if any that you are going to spend.

The truth is that if you have already built just one web page in your life, you already have the skills to become a successful internet marketer. I am not trying to sell you any products or services, I am just sharing my knowledge and wish that one day I change a life forever, as mine is. Many companies now hire internet presence management personnel to insure that the web based marketing is being done effectively.