Another of my favorite and very useful social marketing tips is to make sure you ping the pages that are promoting your content. What this means is if you do article marketing, guest blogging, video submissions or any other type of content that you’ve created that contains a live link back to your site, you’ll want to ping that page with your favorite ping service.

Many times we submit an article and think that’s it. It just takes a minute to do this and it can speed indexing up considerably!   

Choosing the specific web properties you’d like to implement for your social media marketing strategy can be a confusing and time-munching matter. There are literally thousands of Web 2.0 sites out there, each purporting to be exactly what you need. So, as I said in a previous post, you need to be really clear about what it is exactly you’re after. Then you have a basis for choosing dance partners!

First, you need to be pretty plugged in if you’re doing this yourself. many times people come to social marketing thinking they’ll just get themselves a Facebook or MySpace account and everyone will simply rush right over after they see they’re there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Just the fact you’re reading this is a great start, and there are many more voices that can shed light on the ever-changing landscape of social media. For me, I start my day by logging into my Google Reader and checking out the feeds of the various sources I listen to, and I have subscribed to a few! (You want to limit this to whatever number doesn’t keep you glued there all day!)

Now that you have an ongoing education in what’s hot and what’s not, you can begin to choose. Remember not only your goals and objectives, but what exactly will be the return for that investment? You can spend months building up thousands of friends and followers on some of the social networking sites, but if your goal is search engine traffic then you need to know that Google and others don’t give link credit from sites like Facebook, MySpace and others. So what is their value then? Their value lies in getting people excited enough about you that they’ll click through your profile to your website, where the fun can begin! And yes, you can gently massage them in that direction!

If your goals lie more in the direction of search engine rankings and traffic, you’ll be examining sites with a whole different set of eyes. You want sites that give live, followed links, that are very social, and that are getting lots of attention from the search powers that be. (Namely Google) These sites come and go all the time, but there are some that have lasted a while and are proving their worth to those who know how to use them, such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumblr and others.

There’s a lot to consider when choosing sites for your social media marketing arsenal; make sure you come to the table armed with all the knowledge you can!

Next time we’ll talk about the methods you use, and what you need to have done for you.

~Keith

Now that you’ve jumped into the deep end of social media marketing, one of the very first things you’ll notice is that’s theres a LOT of voices vying for your attention! And most of them are trying to outshout one another. If you’re going to make a dent in this medium, something has to be done!

Just getting past all the noise and developing a plan for your social marketing efforts will be the first major challenge you have to conquer. There is no one right way for everyone to crack this egg; you’ll have to choose cafeteria style which sites, programs, networks make sense for you and your projects. This can change also, as Web 2.0 moves at a speed heretofore unseen! What was here today is gone tomorrow, and it truly is a flavor of the day type of marketing.

Some may use Facebook, MySpace, Mixx, Digg and others, while others may find it more doable to focus on just a few sites. Some depend on an network of blogs, others blog comments and trackbacks. the possibilities are many, but however you decide to do it, make sure that you do it frequently. Remember all those voices vying for attention? Well, you;re one of them too, and if you’re AWOL for too long, you’ll have to regain all your lost ground and relations. This kind of marketing is hands on, in their face, and in a word, social! We want to get to know you!

You may have neard this last week of two items that came across our screens regarding Google, Yahoo and Digg.

The first of these was the announcement by Yahoo that it is contracting with Google to serve up contextual advertising on their sites, and will share in that revenue. Yahoo feels it can raise some serious cash by allowing Google to place their advertising next to Yahoo search results. The prevailing sentiments are that Google is far better at targeting this kind of search anyway, and it will be a win-win for both sides, as well as for advertisers and consumers. The deal still has to pass muster with government anti-trust types, so it may well be several months before we see any of this.

Also, Digg has apparently entered into some sort of arrangement with Google as well, possibly even the sale of Digg to Google. No one’s saying anything officially yet, but Digg would fit in nicely at Google, especially as how Google is trying to make inroads into the social marketing scene. These developments both bear watching!  

Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of outsourcing your social media marketing (or any tasks, for that matter!) versus the sometimes irresistible pull to do it all yourself.

I’ve done and do both, and there are several factors at play here. If you’re just a total control freak, then no one will meet your expectations, and you need to know that going in. There comes a time though, if you truly want to grow your business you need to consider outsourcing, or perhaps cloning! 

Outsourcing - The Pros

• You can instantly scale your business. You now have given yourself more time to do the things that are necessary to move your business to the next level because you’re no longer tied down doing the manual labor. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s not time-consuming, mind-warping work. Listen, if you had a landscaping business, you might start out doing some or all of the work, but the “green ceiling” would soon become very apparent! There is no difference online.
• It will dramatically improve the  speed of delivery on projects, as well as customer satisfaction. You’ll be exerting total strategic control of the projects, without having to physically do them. Your existing clients will be happier, and you’ll be able to take on more of them. 
• By outsourcing you’ll be able to take advantage of people who you hire that have an area of expertise or specialty that you may not have, thus improving the quality of your site or service.
• By sticking your head out of the rabbit hole, you will be meeting new people, some of whom may end up being a great ally or partner down the road. You just never know. (Well, sometimes you do!)
• Outsourcing will enable you to take tactical advantage of your competitors by not only increasing your own quality of service and amount of work you’re doing, but eventually your site will be outranking theirs due simply to the amount of content, links and attention that are being showered on it.

Cons Of Outsourcing

• Now and then the quality won’t meet your standards, and you’ll either have to reassign the task or fix it yourself. Sometimes this will cost you money. It’s the cost of freeing up your valuable time, (which I hope is more than you are paying your outsourcers!) As time goes on, however, this happens less frequently as your list of outsourcers grows larger and more dependable.
• You won’t have total control. This can be a hard thing to give up. It was for me. You know you can do it better, and you may very well be right! You just have to decide what’s more important to you; your time or your quest for perfection. 
• You actually have to pay people. In my mind this is a pro, but I know that many people have a problem with this initially. It’s actually sort of a right of passage for your business, as you’re now able to play with the big dogs. Don’t be stingy either! If you opt for the lowest price point out there, you will generally get the lowest quality and dependability. The highest prices may not be worth it it either. Decide on a number that will afford you the best quality and time value for investment and use this as a starting point, You can always add more later.

Social media marketing is a venture ripe for outsourcing, as the tasks of making social posts, blog posts, and creating content take up valuable time. Social marketing is also a vast and confusing landscape of sites and networks, and just keeping up with who’s who can be a challenge.  It’s a shifting playing field, with numerous player substitutions every day. Give this some thought before you start you next social media marketing campaign.