Solid Marketing Strategy for Social Media Sites

Let me start by saying that there are few topics that have created as much buzz, both positive and negative, as internet marketing. So, let's get to the truth about what internet marketing can, and can't, do for your business.

It is absolutely possible to build your brand and customer base on the web. That said, it is not as easy as opening a FaceBook account and hoping for the best. And while there are multiple channels for messaging, if you don't have a solid marketing plan, you will end up spending hours online doing a whole lot of nothing.

If you don't have a marketing plan, do you have a business plan? The foundation of any good business plan quickly lends itself to the build out of effective marketing strategy. Gathering information about your target market, finding out where they "live" online, and crafting effective, engaging messages...these steps create a foundation for a marketing message that brings value. And believe me, if you aren't bringing value, your online constituents will let you know in a hurry.

And that is the biggest difference between online marketing and other marketing channels. When you put out a message, you can get an immediate response...and of course you want that to be positive. The old methodology of push marketing, or crafting a message and then pasting it everywhere, hoping a certain percentage of readers respond, is a no no online.

Your messages need to be tailored to the audience, bring value and only be delivered AFTER you have become a contributing member of the community. Anything else will bring catty comments and lots of murmuring...

One of the most popular online marketing platforms now are social media sites. But with all of the choices online, how are you supposed to know where to invest your time and effort? The biggest error people new to social media make is spreading themselves too thin, signing up for everything. It is most definitely worth the effort of researching potential sites before investing resources.

There are many ways to make this determination, but let me give you the two that I use if I am making a "quick and dirty" assessment. After finding a couple of sites that are of interest, check the Google Page Rank. It is a simplistic measurement, but if they don't have a page rank at all, or a very low one, there is not a lot going on, or it's very new.

Next, skip on over to Compete and enter the web addresses to get a visual on the growth of the site. Compete will approximate and chart traffic, show % of growth and give you the top 5 keywords people are using to find that site. If your sites aren't doing well, it is time to move on...If you search Biznik.com vs. FastPitchNetworking.com, you can see that Biznik is ahead of FastPitch on the graph. When you look down at the is % of growth, though, you will see that Biznik is beating the pants off its competitor. The snapshot shows growth of 570%+ in the past year.

Gathering information like this will help you build and implement more effective marketing strategies. It is wise to invest in learning one or two social marketing platforms. Just remember that to be effective, you must do your homework and have a solid strategy. Online marketing is not a panacea...but it does have great potential.