The original social media marketing strategy was getting involved in professional forums. It is still one of the most effective venues. Especially for businesses such as law firms, CPA firms, etc. for whom participating in some of the newer sites may seem to compromise credibility instead of enhance it.
Along came MySpace, and it was a fun social environment, but who knew it could drive traffic for businesses? Well it did, and in such astonishing ways that new social media sites started springing up everywhere. There are sites focusing on vertical markets, sharing photos, bookmarking, music, video and on and on. It can get dizzying!
So, should you get involved? Absolutely! Which sites are best for you to become involved with, to what extent, and what results should you expect? Well, those are all great questions, and we look forward to helping you find the answers. The answers will be different for everybody that asks, as it depends on your business, your digital assets, your budget, your time, etc.
I recommend that you check out some of the biggest and best, explore them each for 15 minutes or so over a couple weeks. Take notes and list your questions about each then give us a call to help you sort through it and come up with a plan that will work for you. Be prepared to experiment, leave your judgments to the side until you’ve investigated some.
Here’s our list of the most influential social media sites to get you started:
- BlinkList - a tool as well as a place to connect. You can click an icon and the site you are on is added to your blink list. You can connect with others and share
- Digg - a place to see the articles that are hottest, share your opinions about them.
- Del.icio.us - the first social bookmarking site. You’ll find a lot of icons out there in the blogosphere that invite you to add their site to del.icio.us. It’s a way to maintain your “favorites” list on site that you can access on any computer. You can share your bookmarks with others and connect.
- Flickr - a place to share and rate photos.
- LinkedIn - a professional networking site based on the concept of introducting your friends and colleagues to others with a job or need. You can make recommendations, ask for opinions and get a snapshot of what all of your contacts are up to online. I really like it…
- MySpace - I have to add this one, since it’s one of the first and it has proven very effective. I find content distasteful often and don’t use it myself…
- Newsvine - is an open source community news service. Write your own column, comment on stories and customize what you see.
- Ning - a place to create your own social network. I think I’ll try it!
- StumbleUpon - you create a profile, and it sends you to stuff you might like. Connect with others who may like the same things.
- Technorati - the blog search engine. so if a topic has you all riled up, go to technorati and put a related phrase in and see what people have blogged recently on that topic, and chime right in.
- Wikihow - another wiki site, only this one is attempting to accumulate all the “how to’s” they can to help people through everyday tasks and over common obstacles or create, build or develop amazing things.
- Wikipedia - THE wiki. It’s the living encyclopedia you can collaborate on. It’s pretty amazing stuff, and you can’t have used a search engine without noticing that wikepedia entries come up toward the top of most searches. Here, you can perfect a definition. You can choose from the 10 different languages available.
- YouTube -view and share videos. This one is stellar and if you have or wish to create some useful or entertaining footage, create a YouTube station and see what happens!
There are thousands of them and more every day. But here are 13 to start with. Hope you don’t have triskaidekaphobia! I’m going to try them out along with you… Feel free to write to me about your experiences! I’ll happily publish them with a link back to you, provided they’re not racy. There’s a time and place for everything!