Wouldn’t you love to have the best social media marketers for you to teach you everything they know? Well, unfortunately this is not possible, but I managed to contact some top Social Media Marketers and got them to tell a personal tip for social media success:
Don’t just focus on general sites, because the best results can come from the niche sites. If I want to promote a story about the environment, I could potentially get more traffic from Digg but I’m less likely to make the homepage. I could however go to the likes of Hugg.com and Care2.com and promote a story there. There’s a lot better chance of ‘going popular’ on these sites and although the traffic will be less than the likes of Digg / Reddit, it’s targeted traffic and surely what your client would prefer.
Participate in the community before you try and leverage it. It is one thing to read about a community and how it works, but you need to actually get involved in the community.
The Social Media world is growing at an exponential rate. So if you are new to social media, you might try to jump into too many sites all at once. This is stupid, and you’ll end up doing poorly everywhere. Focus on only a handful of sites and grow to know them intimately. Once you have established yourself somewhere, you may be able to leverage yourself in other social sites. Being a finder and producer of good user generated content is sure to attract attention as well. Above all, be sure to watch out for social media burnout
Social Media can be very overwhelming. There are so many Social Media activities to chose from and each are very time consuming, and frankly.. They can be quite addicting (or is that just a problem I have). So, you should be very selective on the activities you spend your time doing. I have a few favorite Social Networking Sites that I spend a lot of time at. I don’t try to be at all of the Social Networking sites.. It is just not possible for me. Plus, if I were a member of every Social Networking site what kind of community member would I be? In order to get anything from a Social Networking Community you need to be giving something to the Community as well. Social Networking is quite a lot like your friends and family in reality. You give and take.. It is a wonderful balance. Give something to your Online Community and you shall receive as well. If you are everywhere all the time… what could you possibly be offering any community?
Get involved. In order to be successful with social media you need to become involved in the communities you plan to leverage for marketing. Not only is it important so you understand exactly how these community societies function, but you will also want to be an active member so you’re not perceived as a spammer when you do try to market your products.
One of the most important things about effectively leveraging social media for marketing purposes is to be patient and to focus on creating value in order to “get” value. In other words, marketers need to understand the notion of “give to get”. Too many search and interactive marketers bust into social networking, media sharing and news communities like bulls in a china shop. Social media communities are not just another place to publish traditional media.
It’s important to become a member of the community, participate and understand both the formal and unwritten rules that guide interactions, information sharing and recommendations. Understanding the community will provide insight into what content types and messaging resonate best and subsequently provide a much greater success rate when a promotion effort is initiated.
To succeed on social media not just once but over and over, become a really good and respected user first before even starting to submit stuff you want to “sell”.
Social media is about you *and* me. We, together, form a community. That said, networking is of utmost importance on social sites. To become a successful contributor to any social site, you need to be a team player, too. Don’t be afraid to reach out to anyone, big or small. Making that connection and maintaining that connection is probably the best (and most important) advice I can give; everything else will fall into place from there.
Never under estimate the power of simply asking someone nicely for something. This works in life and works with social media marketing. Most people don’t realize how willing people are to help you if you simply reach out to them in a “real” way. This works with bloggers (of all levels), this works with making contacts on social media news sites like digg and this works with your colleagues. The key to this all is being willing to help someone in return or even better – before you ask. So much of what we do depends on relationships and it’s the strength of those relationships that will determine your success…
My tip: I know I am not even near a top SMM, but I decided to add my own personal tip about social media.
Understand the people and how they act before you even try to socialize in a community, also analyse top users to see how they act and what they submit, that is what probably made them be top users. Be prepared to fail at first and many times, remember you can learn from every mistake you make.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this post!
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