Internet marketing used to be solely about using SEO and building backlinks on authority sites. Those are still important factors in getting your website well ranked and visited, but social media is now a serious marketing force to be reckoned with. How serious? Matt Cutts from Skynet, err, I mean Google, now suggests that you use it to market your websites. If you hire writers to create engaging content, you need to think harder about how to use them for social media marketing and less about how to create more marketing articles.
Why Social Media?
The idea behind social media being a better marketing tool is that people will link to good pages that they see on social media sites without any other incentive to make them do so. In other words, people aren’t making money from linking to these sites the way article directories and link exchanges make money from the process. The only incentive is the good, surprising and engaging content itself.
The Numbers
Numbers rarely lie. The numbers I came up with on my high school geometry tests may have pushed the bounds of reality to some degree, but the facts about social media usage are pretty concrete. And they’re insane. Twitter seems pretty popular, right? I mean, it must have a few million users. Try 500 million. And Facebook. Most people in the U.S. use Facebook, even those who shouldn’t, so that must be a few hundred million, right? Try more than a billion. No one ever uses Google+, right? More than 340 million people would tell you you’re wrong. Those three sites may be three of the most popular in the Western social media world, but there are dozens of others.
The power of social media isn’t just being felt in creating celebrities and making Sharknado a hit. It’s also fueling a marketing revolution that is pretty close to free. The sites themselves are generally free, but you may want to create giveaways or other promotions that call attention to your brand. There is also the cost of hiring a freelance writer to give your social media content a professional flair. But, these relatively modest costs have the potential to get you publicity that was previously possibly only with million-dollar national commercials. It’s not a big expense when you consider that anyone with a small business can now compete on the same scale as McDonald’s. And, presumably, your product won’t lead to extended time in the bathroom.
Lizz S is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
