37 Ways to Use Social Media to Market Your Website

The key to every site’s success is through good marketing and promotion. Even if you have really good and substantial content on your site, you still need to promote it to avoid getting left behind the competition. In the internet community, the best way to achieve an increase in website traffic and revenue is to take advantage of social media. When used correctly, this tool can provide a platform for brand awareness, exposure, networking, and a huge boost in traffic & sales.

Since there are so many different definitions of social media, let’s clarify what we’re talking about here. Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

Listening: Gathering intelligence on your market and your customer

Build sentiment measurements – “showing how people feel about a subject and how those feelings are changing over time.” Listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.

Learn which bloggers might care about your customer.

Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com, Google, Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.

Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “social media case study” in del.icio.us.

Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, and your space.

Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of your website.

Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding your site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.

Learn how to NOT ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.

Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.

Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other reward for their time and effort.

Talking: Engaging in a two-way discussion to get your message out (and get messages in)

Build blogs and teach techniques for conversational marketing and business relationship building.

Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).

Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.

Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.

Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.

Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.

Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, so that customers feel educated, equipped, and informed.

Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse.

Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.

Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.

Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more intimate relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.

Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is a brief and entertaining video better than a longer but more informative one? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test features.

Energizing: Letting your customers give testimonials on your behalf (viral, word of mouth)

Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.

For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.

Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata)

Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and see what parts you want to use in your traditional press releases.

Help customers and prospects connect with you on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or another aggregator widget.

Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.

Supporting: Getting your customers to support each other

Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.

Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.

Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events.

Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Good source of information is, Jeremiah Owyang.

Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.

Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. It’s important to try new territories, but tread gently.

Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.

Embracing: Building better products and services through collaboration with clients

Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education. Use wikis and widgets to help recommend, or use videos and podcasts for education.

Try using the same tools internally that your already using externally and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration.

The bottom line is that you want to have a clear objective, be a valuable resource, and use the social media services in the ways they intend to be used. Anything else will get you filtered out, unfollowed, banned or blacklisted and ultimately be a complete waste of your time.