3 Ways Social Media Marketing Will Benefit Your Business

Social Media Marketing is simply a way for businesses to get connected with their customers and potential customers, allowing even the little guy to become competitive in an otherwise swamped market.  

Also known as social networking, this form of marketing is taking over the internet thanks to the many social sites that continue to become popular over time.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of social sites throughout the net and many of them can help you benefit your business in 3 different ways.  

Social media marketing can be used to generate direct traffic, organic traffic, and get connected with people all over the world.  Before social sites started popping up, this kind of connection was just not possible.  Now, even the small businesses can take advantage of this marketing technique in order to grow their business as they desire.  

Social media marketing may seem easy, but there are many factors that come into play in order to achieve success from this ever growing popular marketing technique.

The most obvious way that social media marketing can help your business is through direct traffic. Direct traffic is any traffic, or visitors, that come to your website through links you have placed on social sites. It is highly debatable whether or not direct traffic is really beneficial in social media marketing.

If you would like more people to be able to find your business, you might simply submit a link from your website to any social site. This is what is known as social bookmarking. It is quick and easy to bookmark your links within social sites.

Once you have bookmarked a link from your site, it will be available for others using that social site to view and follow. However, 2 things are debatable; whether or not people using the social site will actually follow the link, and whether they will be beneficial to your business or not. The thing is, most people using these social sites are simply there to have fun and bookmark the various sites they enjoy.

Whether or not direct traffic will be beneficial for your business will depend on what you are offering. If your business is in the home business niche, you may receive very little benefit from such direct traffic. However, musicians populate social sites because they sell music, and that is a niche where everyone can get involved. Almost everyone listens to music, and direct traffic can help musicians because it will increase their following and their business.

Even if you don't have something to offer as widespread as music, direct traffic may still benefit your business. All you need to do is make sure that you are meeting a need.

Another way that social media marketing will help your business is through organic traffic.  This kind of traffic comes directly from the search engines.  This is the best kind of traffic because any traffic that comes from it was directly targeted by the search engines, based on keywords used that your site was recognized for.  

When you do a search using Google, you type in words or a phrase of some kind, and the search engine targets websites it recognizes as having keywords that match what you are looking for.  Quick example:  If you were to type in my name (Dave Earley), the search engine would bring up some results based on webpages that have my name, or someone else having the same name.  Algorithms in Google decide what pages rank the best from the amount of backlinks, quality of content, and keywords.  

How does social media marketing impact these results?

It's actually the social bookmarking efforts that impact the results.  Many social sites allow users to add bookmarks.  As you continue to bookmark more and more pages from your website, the pages will rank higher in the search engines, as well as your website itself.  Search engines give websites with many backlinks a high ranking because they have more of a presence throughout the web.  

There are, however, 2 things to keep in mind when using social bookmarking; for the most effective results you need to have quality content on your website along with proper keywords that you have researched, and not all social sites will allow you to submit links from your website alone.  As long as you have quality content and well researched keywords, your website will rank higher in the search engines from social bookmarking because you are building more backlinks to your site.  However, there are some social sites that frown upon users submitting links from their websites alone.  Sometimes this is considered spamming, and users get banned from the site.  

In order to keep from getting banned, you will probably need to submit links from sites that do not belong to you.  The easiest way to do this would be to log various RSS feeds in Bloglines, or by using Google Reader.  Submitting links is quick, easy and it benefits your business by generating organic traffic that comes from the search engines.  This is the best kind of traffic because it is targeted based on keywords and content on your site.  

The most difficult thing to do is probably help others out, even though you need to spend your time getting things done.  However, spending at least a little bit of your time helping others in need can also be very beneficial to your business.  

When you give of your own time to help others out, they will probably remember it, and these two things will increase over time; your credibility and your following.  Social sites that are interactive are a great place to get to know people, get connected and share your experience.  By sharing information and helping others in need, you become a credible source in your niche and you will also create a following of people by word of mouth.  

Some of those whom you help will let others know about it, and as your credibility grows, your business will also increase.  Sometimes it is difficult to develop a nice relationship with your online customers, but by using social media marketing, it becomes very easy to stay connected with them.  

Potential customers need to trust the person that they are doing business with.  Social media marketing will enable business owners to easily connect with customers in order to share information.  When a business gives out useful information, it is putting itself in a better position to attract more customers.  When a business lends a helping hand to those in need, it will attract more customers.  When a business is able to stay connected with current customers, as well as get in contact with potential customers, that business will grow as its relationships continue to grow.  

These are the benefits of using social media marketing and they will help you improve your business.  Whether you have a legitimate home business, an offline sales business, or you are just trying to get the word out on your product or service, social media marketing puts you in a position to compete with any of the other top companies that would otherwise dominate online.  

3 Ways Social Media Marketing Will Benefit Your Business  Copyright © Dave Earley 2009