It's time for me to talk about social media and some 'rules' to make this work profitably.
Social media is powerful because it has a "different" kind of traffic—your visitors can get engaged with you on your site and be interactive.
They'll want to express their viewpoints and "talk" with you which, make this traffic source more intimate.
So here are my 7 Rules of Social Media Success:
Rule #1: Make your site and your site's content easily accessible. Finding you is one thing, but what will they find when they get there? Can your audience easily link to it? How can they be notified of updates to your site? How easy is it to broadcast or syndicate? How easily can they reach your site over and over again?
Rule #2: Include buttons and links on your page that will make tagging and bookmarking easy to do. Adding bookmarklets to your site makes it easy for your audience to have a say or express the value of your site. It makes it easy for them to promote and comment as well.
Rule #3: Reciprocate any incoming links. Use features like trackbacks (for WordPress blogging) or retweet in Twitter and so on. It's an added incentive to make others wanting to link to you again and often.
Rule #4: Make your content portable (even off the web) using MP3s, PDFs, etc. Make it easy to link to or easy to add on their site. One of the best examples of sites that do this is YouTube. They provide a URL as well as an embed code that makes vlogs portable. With the trend of mobile marketing now, making content available through formats such as PDFs and MP3s definitely improves your content consumption.
Rule #5: Allow others to take your idea and make it their own. We're not talking about plagiarism, but about collaboration. Some of the greatest ideas can come as a result of someone taking your idea to the next level. At the very least, your audience will appreciate your ideas and give you some acknowledgment. REMEMBER—community is all about sharing.
Rule #6: Always act as a resource for your audience even when there's no apparent benefit. The more helpful you are, the greater your efforts will be appreciated and these benefits will materialize over the long term.
Rule #7: Be free with giving recognition and praise to your audience for providing insightful and useful comments on your site. People love to be noticed for their contributions. Make them feel good about you by making them feel good about themselves.
These rules provide the foundation for your search media optimization strategy. I think if you start incorporating these rules as a part of your site's plan, you'll see immediate benefits and ultimately, make you more money.
For me, you'll see more of social media work down the road. It's TIME.
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