Website SEO Texas – What is Social Media

Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

What is social media?

The definition according to Wikipedia:

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction with technology, transforming broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content or consumer-generated media.

Social media can be said to have 3 components;

1. Concept (art, information, or meme).
2. Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).
3. Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

Basically social media is a platform for the free exchange of information. And this free exchange of information can lead to sales and back links to your site. Back links help to increase you ranking in the search engines (you will be easier to find online).

Top social media sites

There are basically two types of social media sites. The first type is the community conversation types. Some of the top social media sites of this type are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The second type is the bookmarking social media sites. Here you bookmark what you like on the web and see who else likes the same information. Usually limited community interaction than the community conversation types. Some of the top social media sites of this type are Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Propeller and Technorati.

But remember there are hundreds of sites.

Social Media Marketing

You own a business and have an Internet website. You can use social media as part of your marketing effort.

Lets take an example:
Your business is a software vendor. You create your own software and sell it online and off line. You have just completed a new software project and it is ready to sell. So how do you use social media?

First you sign up for an account with Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Set up your profile and find friends who have accounts with these same social media sites.

Next you update what you are currently doing to include your new software for sale. All of your friends will see this.

Now set up accounts on Propeller, Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, and Technorati. Then bookmark your new post on your site about the new software on each of these sites with a short comment. All of this bookmarking will lead to back links to your site.

You have just started your social media marketing plan. But doing this once is not enough and you should not limit your comments and bookmarks to your site. You need to interact with others and their information. Start a conversation. As you make friends, people will check you out and go to your website. If they like you and like what you have to offer on your website, they will buy from you.

Social media tools

Using social media does not require any tools other than your browser and an Internet connection. However there are some social media tools that might help you to be more efficient.

Here are some of those tools you should check out:

No matter what your business is, social media and social media bookmarking should be part of your Internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) plan.

Return to Internet Marketing.