Social Media Marketing & SEM

If i am not wrong ,Guru′s of internet marketing are calling Social Media Marketing the next big thing on the internet, A lot of people on the internet are are coming up with research papers, reports &amp other proofs to prove how Social Media Marketing is cost efficient,easy &amp effective way of marketing, So i also decided to write a little article on Social Media Marketing.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.

This is the defination from wikipedia. Very true, Social media marketing is all about establishing your self as a brand amongst the online communities.

Social Media &amp SEM

SEM is the process of increasing number of targeted visitors to your website by means of paid search listings or organic seo.

Social Media is a process of converting the targeted visitors coming to your website in to your subscribers(BLOG FEEDS) ,fans(Facebook Pals,Facebook Community members,youtube videos) ,followers(twitter followers), Providing them some or the other way to stay updated about your product or website.it helps you to get introduced to new targeted customers through word of mouth publicity &  viral marketing elements of social media marketing. Another advantage of social media is that you can influence the purchase decisions of your target audience,followers,subscriber by establishing your self as a brand in front of them. By showing that you as a brand do value your customer’s money,time & resources ,& you are always there to help your customers if they have any troubles with your products.

SEM & SM M go hand to hand, they are basically two sides of the internet marketing coin.

SEM willl always help you in developement of your social media strategies & SM M will always be helpful in your Search engine marketing strategies. SEM is basicaly dependent on PPC & Back Links. So when you start combining your Social media tactics with your SEM tactics, you staet gaining backlinks by creating a buzz about your product in the user community,Also when you are running SEM campaigns you can start converting your visitors in to FANS/SUBSCRIBERS/FOLLOWERS. & once your visitors become your follower you are bound to get the unfair advantage of social media marketing elements(word of mouth publicity &  viral marketing).

So basically according to me it is a good idea to mixup your SEM strategies with Socail Media Marketing.

Some of the key factors of social media marketing are:

• Creating a blog for your business &amp keep on updating it regularly with use full content so that you can get good number of rss subscribers.
• Publishing your news releases in the blogger world, creating a buzz about your product in the blogger world.(you can do this by buying paid blog posts on popular blogs)
• By creating twitter profile so that people can follow you on twitter
• Bookmarking your blogs on social bookmarking sites like digg & then by making shouts to spread the word.
• creating facebook,orkut,myspace profiles so that people can stay in touch with you.
• paid advertising on social networking sites like orkut,facebook,myspace,hi5 etc…
• taking care of all negative comments about you & your product on internet. Remember even a single negative comment can influence your potential customer’s purchase decision.
• creating videos & submitting them to popular sites like youtube,metacafe etc…, this does help creating a buzz about your product.