How to Generate and Use Social Media Buzz

Move over, SEO. Social media optimization is also in the spotlight. Web hosting provider explains...

Search engine optimization used to be the main tool that webmasters used to bring traffic to most sites. Web hosting provider explains - social media optimization (SMO) is a hot topic in Internet marketing because of its increasing role in generating traffic and interest. Linked with SMO is SMM, or social media marketing. SMO plus SMM equals (ideally) social media buzz.

Social media, SMM, SMO, and social media buzz explained

Social media is the term for websites where people interact, bookmark, and discuss opinions, experiences, and perspectives. Forums, blogs, and wikis are social media sites, along with social networking sites such as del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, and StumbleUpon. Also part of social media are sites where users can post their opinions and experiences about specific products and services, such as Amazon.com and TripAdvisor.com.

Social media marketing (SMM) is promoting your website, services, or products via social media. It's marketing that encourages people to pass on a message about what's being marketed.

Social media optimization (SMO), a sister of sorts of search engine optimization (SEO), is optimizing your site content and accessibility for social media sites. It's working to increase the likelihood that people will link to it from social media sites and talk about it. While different from its SEO sister, SMO helps with SEO because it results in increased inbound links.

Social media buzz is the intended result of SMM and SMO — people talking about and linking to your site, services, and products.

See the links at the end of this article for more information about social media, SMM, and SMO.

How social media buzz works

Since it began spreading online, "word of mouth" has become more influential. People tell people about something of interest to them, and the effect multiplies as more people tell more people by writing about it and linking to it. The result is social media buzz.

Instead of having to ask friends what they know about something until they find someone who does, people can now search online to find people talking about it. And when they have something to say about it, they can join in too, adding to the buzz. They can also start commentary themselves, and people from almost anywhere can join in.

As we wrote about recently, a recent survey indicated that consumers give more weight to the opinions of other consumers than to any other forms of advertising. Recommendations from consumers were trusted by 78 percent of those surveyed, with 61 percent indicating that they trusted consumer opinions posted online, compared with online banner ads at 26 percent, for example. When consumers have positive things to say online about what you offer, those opinions are more valuable than most paid advertising. Conversely, if those opinions are negative, they can hurt your business.

How to generate social media buzz

Write for your audience.

• Research social media sites to see which ones are most likely to produce links to your type of content, and focus on those sites.
• Create content that your audience will want to link to. Study the most popular articles at those sites, and write content that will appeal to the same audience.
• Provide quotable leads or pull quotes that people will want to copy and include with links to your site.
• Think beyond keywords. Continue using them for SEO, but what type of content and writing style will appeal to your target audience? Find out, and create it.
• Keep your content fresh. Revise current content to keep it from looking dated, and keep adding new content.
• Offer something unique. Fill a niche that hasn't been filled yet.

Help your audience find you.

• Start a company blog and add content to it regularly.
• Publish articles at online article directories with links back to your site.
• Look for opportunities to publish articles as a guest blogger at other blogs, with a link to your site included.
• Add social bookmarking buttons to select social media sites after articles at your site.
• Create a profile at targeted social media sites, add useful links to various sites, take part in other ways, and post links to key pages at your site.

Talk to your audience.

• Respond to comments about your site where responses would be welcome (check the site terms first).
• Join in discussions where it would be appropriate to do so.
• Quote some of the comments at social media sites in your blog, both positive and negative, and respond to them there.
• Invite comments after your blog articles and respond to those comments.

Give to your audience.

• Offer something free that would appeal to your audience: free information, free tools, free trials, free subscriptions, etc. Make it easily accessible.
• Hold a contest and promote the contest and its prizes. Make the contest and prizes relevant to your products or services. Create a contest page detailing the rules and prizes, and link to the contest page from your social media site profiles. Announce the contest via your mailing list and blog, press releases, and contest sites. Write about the winners after the contest for more publicity.

How to use social media buzz

You've got lots of people talking about and visiting your site. Now what?

As with SEO, getting traffic is just the first part of the job. What people see after they arrive will help determine the conversion rate. The difference is that when you get traffic via social media buzz, you have an audience that expects to interact. In addition to providing quality content, give them opportunities to continue to interact:

• Include links to your blog, product review pages, and contact page.
• Update the page getting the buzz with links to new content. Give your audience fresh content to talk about.
• Include calls to action, such as a newsletter signup box or a link to a contest page.
• Invite people to take part in a survey or be part of a product or usability test group.
• Use feedback you receive to improve your services, products, or site.

Related blog articles

• How to Market Your Brand via Social Media Websites
• Get Your Website Tagged
• Socializing Your Site to Success: Using Folksonomy to Build Traffic
• Web 2.0 for Webmasters
• Bad Web Press: Can It Be Fixed?

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