Today I’m going to start a series of posts to talk about how to develop your own social media marketing strategy. That is a long-winded (and admittedly long-tail!) way of saying we’re going to discuss how to best optimize your campaign to get traffic from social media, brand your name or your company’s to reach any other goals you may have in mind, such as sales, backlinks and more.

To start with let’s talk about the preliminary steps you should take yourself through to get a clear idea of just where you want to end up. I know, it’s much more fun to go and tinker and twitter all day with all the various Web 2.0 goodies out there, but if you’d like to stand above your competitors this is a crucial step.

When we start social marketing services for a new client, we give them a worksheet to fill out detailing exactly what they’d like to see from their campaign. We do this as much for them as for us: it not only helps everyone focus on the same goals, but sometimes forces the client to really think about these things. Many times it will expose a weak spot in the campaign before it even starts, such as poor keyword choices, unrealistic expectations, or poor market research. Better to fix these things going into your social marketing campaign, otherwise it’s a great deal of work for nothing!

You need to spend some time thinking clearly about what goals you have for your social marketing, and makes some choices. If you’re running this yourself, you need to be ruthless about things like time management, and the number of sites and services you actually take on. You only have so many hours in a day, and to be truly effective you really need to focus. If you have a staff or are going to outsource this, there are still vital questions to ask, such as the specific choices of how you brand yourself, how you’ll implement this and how you’d like it done.

The point is that even though social media is now accessible and convenient for any of us now, that doesn’t mean it will be effective as a tool for you if you just barge in, announce yourself and expect hordes of hungry visitors to descend upon you. Doesn’t work that way. A good analogy would be to those of us who used this kind of appproach with PayPerClick advertising. (My hand is raised; I’m guilty!) You put up an unfocused Adwords campaign with zillions of poorly chosen (but highly-trafficked!) keywords and are dismayed to find you’ve racked up a hefty bill at the end of the month! Social media marketing is really no different. Unfocused efforts here will also lead to wasted, time, money and opportunity.

In some ways, the stakes are even greater, particularly since many times we are attempting to brand our own names. Get this wrong and you’ll pay dearly! A reputation is a terrible thing to waste!

Next time I’ll talk about how to choose among the many thousands of Web 2.0 properties out there to best advance your cause.

~Keith 

Hello!

As a lot of you know, I do a lot of work with Howie Schwartz.  I get the opportunity to work with a lot of internet marketing “gurus” and they each have areas of specialty that they are the industry leaders in.  For Howie, he is DEFINITELY top dog when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, Universal Search and all things relating to dominating in Google.

It’s funny, I actually woke up one day not too long ago and had this realization that I actually understand and KNOW much of this stuff.  A side effect of pulling information from his brain and trying to make some sense of it onto paper. :0)  Anyway, one of the  main reasons I’m telling you this is because I’ve learned a LOT about keyword research.

I know many of you already know about keyword research, or at least think you do!  This is so vital to your social marketing success.  You’re basically basing all of your marketing around your chosen keywords, so you dang well better understand WHICH keywords are bringing you conversions.  Traffic is nice, but conversions are what really matter.

I was at a conference recently and had someone tell me that their traffic stats were unbelievable, but no one was opting in!  I don’t know for sure, but it makes me think they are driving browsers to their site as opposed to buyers.  This topic has made me decide to do a series of posts on this blog about keyword research.  Then I’ll turn those posts into a free report.  So, be sure to check back often to get the next installment!

Today, I mostly wanted to get you to start thinking a little bit differently about keyword research.  There is no magic tool that is going to spit out a list of keywords that are going to give you a marketing blueprint so that you get so many sales you don’t even know what to do with yourself!

There are good keyword research tools available, but you need to think of them like a starting point.  With the way web 2.0 has changed the internet, you really need to be doing some manual additional research to REALLY pull in those buyers you’re looking for.   But we’ll talk more about that in another post!

Today, you have one assignment.  Go through you niche and identify what your “buying phrases” are.  An example Howie likes to use is about selling TV’s.  If you have a website selling TV’s, then you should know that people who are ready to buy are not typing “flat screen tv” or even “Sony Flat Screen TV” into the Serps.

People typing those types of keywords are still browsing.  They’re still trying to decide what they want.  Those aren’t the people you want.  You want the people who have their credit cards out and are ready to buy!  People who are ready to buy have already done their research and have decided what they want.  They are typing in words like, “Samsung TX-T2082 20″ CRT TV“  (Yes, I pulled a random model number from google).

People who are typing in words like that are now just looking for the best deal, warranty, etc.  They are buyers.  They are who you want hitting your website.

Get out your notebook and look around your market/niche and identify what your buyers are typing into Google when they are ready to BUY not BROWSE.

The next segment in this keyword research series will be on the TRUE definition of long tail and why drilling down is so important.  It may not be what you think. :0)

~Shelby