There is a tendency when talking about social media (SM) to jump to thinking right away of the big two: Facebook and Twitter. But the landscape of social media is much bigger than that. There are numerous categories of social media that any website marketer should consider when deciding how to market their site – even if that website marketer is one person with a small business website.
Social Networks
The first batch of social media sites are the social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. These are the three big guns in the genre and each has a distinct demographic that a savvy web marketer should be aware of. Social networks are sites where people network directly together. I know you, you know me, and we make a connection through the site, thereby allowing one another to read each others updates and share links, photos, videos and such.
LinkedIn is the place to connect with educated, more affluent decision makers and business owners – particularly if you are looking to make human resource connections. LinkedIn is not the place to build a fan base, but it is a good place to build a name for yourself among peers by utilizing Groups and giving good feedback and comments. Brand building is not the strong suit of LinkedIn unless you yourself are the brand.
Faecbook probably has more ink and pixels devoted to itself than any of the social media platforms except maybe Twitter (the darling of bloggers and press). Facebook provides enormous potential to the web marketer on several fronts. Although it has a strong history of youth demographics, the 35-54 and 55 + age categories are experiencing explosive growth with a doubling to tripling of members in these age brackets every six months. With targeted ad delivery on Facebook it is now perhaps the best SM for a campaign geared toward any specific age, gender or geography. Facebook Fan Pages can give your local business a chance to connect with natural social networks from the customers coming through your doors, and perhaps entice new ones to join as well. For the tech types the applications API and Facebook Connect provide some very rich opportunities to tie in to the platform directly.
For many folks MySpace is the “has been” player in SM, plagued by the sense that the site is a throwback to poorly designed websites of the early years of the web (think flashing hot pink banners and neon green backgrounds) and it is haunted by teenagers with very little content of value for most self-respecting adults. From a web marketing point of view there is still ample opportunity to reach a young targeted audience if you can stomach the site itself.
Social News Sites
The second place marketers should consider when devising an online web marketing strategy is social news platforms like Digg, Reddit and Newsvine. These sites act more or less in the same way: Users of the site submit content to categories. This content consists of a link to an outside source (think: the site/page you are marketing) along with a brief description of the link and files it in a category. Other users of the service vote on the content and as more votes are gathered the item can rise to the top of the heap, bringing in HUGE amounts of traffic if the article makes it to the home page.
The impact of a good showing on social news sites is not typically long-lived, but rather immense and short-lived. Many sites find themselves unprepared for the surge of traffic a good rank on Digg can bring, oftentimes bringing web servers to their knees. People are not stupid, so if you decide to seed social news sites with links to your own content know others may call you out for it. Being a good net citizen on social news sites means sharing links and stories that are of interest even when they are not promoting your brand, website or position.
Spend time at each news platform before deciding which seems a natural fit for you – they differ enough to make it well worth your while.
Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking is the sharing of links to pages on the internet you find interesting, funny or important in some way. The two biggest platforms for social bookmarking include Delicious and StumbleUpon. They act in similar ways by allowing members to bookmark pages and share those bookmarks both with friends on the networks and with larger audiences interested in the category of content being bookmarked. Delicious promotes bookmarks much like the social news sites, where popularity can promote a bookmark and bring substantial traffic. Delicious uses a free-form tagging method of classifying content while StumbleUpon categorizes interests with fixed lists. Social bookmarking sites are a useful place to add your site pages so long as the content you offer is actually valuable in one way or another.
Social Wikis
Wikis are collaborative authoring platforms which allow community members to add or edit information on a particular subject. Wikipedia is the most well-know wiki and serves as prime example of the power of community created content. Wikipedia regularly shows up at or near the very top of search engine results for a vast array of searches due to the relevancy of the articles being offered by its’ members. From a website marketing perspective it is very difficult to gain links in Wikipedia. Most marketers avoid trying to build links in Wikipedia because those links are often removed by editors as being considered Spam. Unless you have a very authoritative site on a subject matter it is unlikely you will be linked to from Wikipedia.
If you happen to offer a lot of How-to content another social wiki site to consider is Wikihow, which is a good place to find and fill a niche subject with quality content and if appropriate link back to your site.
Social Q&A
Have a question? Someone, somewhere surely has an answer. Askiville and Yahoo! Answers are two examples of the social Q&A sites that fill the job description of people providing direct answers to direct questions. The marketing potential for these sites is based on giving good, informative and timely answers to questions being asked about subject matters you have an expertise in. Within the body of answers it is acceptable practice to provide links for finding more information.
Social Microblogging
The darling of the web these days is Twitter. Although it can take some getting used to, Twitter is a very good platform for connecting with people interested in what you have to say. The difficulty is in getting it said in 140 characters or less. Because of the nature of short statements, Twitter lends itself nicely to being a platform for building links to relevant content. If, for example, you have a keen interest in the State of Vermont then it makes sense to use your Twitter account to follow other people who talk about issues in Vermont or are from Vermont. Twitter is also a popular platform because they offer an API which allows developers to tie into the site and share Twitter feeds on their own sites. Building a following on Twitter is no easy business, but for those who manage it well the rewards can be a steady influx of traffic to sites you link to and a loyal following of people who want to follow you.
Conclusion
If you are serious about marketing your website then you owe it to yourself to investigate the many social avenues that are open to you. Social media has changed the game when it comes to who controls the message. No longer is a marketing message sent from a central location to be absorbed by the target audience, but rather the message is controlled by the audience. It is not worth pursuing a social media campaign if you are unable to let go of the notion that you will have control over what is said about your business. Instead, it is far more important to use the SM platforms to engage with, connect to and listen to your audience. Provide links to your valuable content, certainly, but know that a successful social media campaign is one that provides a conversation more than a statement.
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