Suze Bragg

Part 10 (of 12) of social media marketing: help your content travel
May 23, 2008

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Driving traffic to your site is not only important, it's a requirement for success with social media marketing.  Making content that others want to read will help your business through word-of-mouth, promotion and building trust.  I write often about creating relevant content--content your audience finds engaging and they learn something instead of being sold something.  With social media marketing, you want to help your content grow legs and travel outside your website.  This will ultimately drive traffic back to you.  Here are some ways to do that:

1. Create PDFs of important information contained on your site so people can save them to their computers for reading or printing later.  If it's really good, they'll pass it along to others to read as well.  Plus it makes it easier for other people to use your content on their own websites.  Helps with cross-pollunation.

2. Create videos that can be uploaded onto media sites like YouTube and Google Video that can grab and engage an audience.

3. Create podcasts that people can download to their iPods to listen off-line at the gym, in the car, etc.

4. Create a Digg button / create an account on Digg.com so people can "digg you".  Digg is a user driven social content website where people select articles from around the Web that they find "digg worthy" and select it so it's placed on Digg.  It receives a large audience and you will become found overnight.  Learn more about Digg here.

5. Create a del.icio.us button / create an account on del.ici.us so people can save your content as one of their bookmarks and it becomes part of their network.  Users can identify other people whose content they appreciate and can view their bookmarks and ultimately creating a network of people who are linked to each other through common interests and mutual respect (isn't that pretty much the definition of social media marketing?).  Here are the popular sites bookmarked/tagged to give you an idea. I think the best way to start this on your site is to register, add the button to your content so people can select it, and announce it via an email message to your database that you now have this feature.  In return, ask that they supply you with feedback of articles they'd like you to include on your website.

6. If you have a blog (which I hope you do),  register it with Technorati so you can see who's linking to your blog.  You can get started here.

7.  Create a simple website on Squidoo to drive traffic to your main website.  Weird name, cool way to market yourself.  It is a good idea to have a squidoo site (they call them lenses) to your company's name.  If it's done well, it will appear in search results, which of course drives more traffic... Check it out and get started promoting your business.

8.  Netscape/AOL now has propeller.com, a social news portal programed by you (and the rest of the Internet users).  All the stores are submitted and voted on by their members.  How do you submit your content? You have to sign up with them to create an account.  Here are their hints and tips...They also have a Propeller web browser.

9.  Register with Ma.gnolia, another social bookmarketing site.  They also tag them for you, which is why they're different than del.icio.us.  I checked out their small business section and noticed that this would be a great place for you to add your information.  

10.  Submit your site to StumbleUpon (I know you just love all these website names in this blog).  You need to download an add-on to your toolbar and when you're viewing your homepage, click on the thumbs-up button. 

There are many more social networking sites you can promote yourself on.  I'll include in a separate blog next week.  Stay tuned...

Posted by Suze Bragg on May 23, 2008 | Comments (0)