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According to Wikipedia, “Social media are 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, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform 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 (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).”
There are four main types of social media: blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and forums. Social media helps promote your site by sending direct traffic, producing links to your site and generating awareness.
Why choose social media marketing?
People now communicate more regularly via social networks than they do by email.
People tend to prefer social media, since they bored of the spammy email environment. According to Nielsen Online Research notes, membership-based communities are visited by more than two-thirds of Internet users from around the entire world. Keep in mind that Facebook only has 250 million users.
Social networking is also preferred also by the 35-49 year-old segment.
35 – 49 year-olds provide the biggest growth opportunity in the social networking sector. If you still believe in that social media is just for kids, you are absolutely wrong.
Social Media is being used by industry giants, too.
Burger King and Dell are only two examples of corporate giants successfully utilizing social media tools for marketing. Burger King’s “sacrifice 10 friends” application over Facebook went well and got pulled over 20,000 users. Dell created and environment for its consumers and stakeholders to learn more about the people behind the Dell brand. It implemented landing pages which listed its employees Twitter, Blog and Facebook accounts. Their return on investment was more than USD 1 million and it was one of the biggest successes over social media.
How can you do it?
Begin a Business Blog
If you want to increase your site traffic, starting a blog will help you a lot. If you consistently offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people going to like it and link it, which will increase your site’s PageRank. Try to build your blog on your domain name, but if you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.
Become Part of a Social Media Community
By now everyone should know about Facebook. Go ahead and make for yourself and your business a fan page. You should also have a LinkedIn account. Don’t forget to use Twitter, too. Other good online communities are Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Google Bookmarks. Search engines and spiders just adore them!
But do not spam! It will ruin all of your social marketing work. Also try not to hog conversations, try to build trustful relationships.
Promote Your Site in Forums and Discussion Lists
Forums are the original example of social media. Don’t hesitate to use Google Groups to find suitable email based discussion lists. Search online for blogs and forums. Again, don’t bother with spam forums and do not spam. Instead you can add your links under your signature. Be patient, slowly people get to know you, trust you and finally do business with you.
Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site
It’s simple but efficient. Just ask your visitors to bookmark your site. The AddThis widget automatically does this for you. When you integrate the AddThis JavaScript add-on into your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. If your visitors click the button, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. It enables users to quickly share your webpage.
You can be our fan on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or subscribe us on FriendFeed! And don’t forget to visit our community pages and blogs too! 
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