Social media channels are great marketing avenues. More and more people are using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace and any business that does not do social media marketing or SMM fails to do so at its own peril. SMM is an integrated marketing communications strategy that is employed by organizations to connect it with its target markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates promotional elements such as personal selling, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, publicity, and sales promotion. Viral marketing campaigns are now classified under integrated marketing communications and this means uploading a promotional video on YouTube also counts as SMM. Blogs can also be considered to be a social media outlet. Other good sources of SMM are discussions, commenting, polls, live and event chats, ratings and reviews, resource manager, user profiles, member directory management, friend lists, and private Messaging.

One of the greatest advantages of social media marketing is the fact that you spend less than you would with other Internet marketing options such as Google AdWords and traditional marketing methods such as classified ads in newspapers and direct mail marketing. SMM strategies are cheap to implement and to maintain. The only expense is probably hiring a programmer or a freelance designer and even this is a one off expense. Another advantage of SMM is the fact that it gives your customers an additional channel to seek customer support. This is important because other channels such as telephones are expensive and emails take time to answer. SMM is also advantageous in that it helps you gain competitive and customer insight. This is important because it will help you in product development and in rolling out your marketing strategy. SMM is an effective method of brand reputation management. With an effective social media marketing strategy, you will be able to recruit and to retain new businesses and customers.

Yet another advantage of SMM is the fact that SMM is defensible, meaning this is a great way of generating extra traffic. SMM is natural, meaning that you get natural links. These are the best types of links since people will appreciate them, you will attract backlinks, and search engine robots will appreciate them. Natural links ensure that you get search engine optimization or SEO. This type of marketing gives you a quick turnaround and it is also advantageous in that traditional Internet marketing methods such as pop-up boxes and banner ads are losing popularity. SMM creates a buzz about your product if you are lucky and it is an effective way of complementing other online marketing strategies.

With the emergence of Web 2.0, there are several tools that you can use to build business and social connections, to share information, and to collaborate on projects over the Internet. This means you do not need to hire a professional for your social media marketing campaign. This means you get to save money and you get to use the strategies you want. However, hiring a professional has some advantages over DIY or do-it-yourself SMM. When you hire a professional, you will get professionalism since these pros have the necessary skills, experience, and tools. Hiring a professional is also advantageous in that you get unparalleled convenience and you can use the free time and energy to develop your business. When you hire a professional, you will not need a permanent IT professional and this means you actually end up saving money.

There are several specialized SMM tools that have been developed in the recent past. These software tools are meant for such things as social media monitoring, social aggregation, social bookmarking and tagging, social analytics and reporting, automation, blog marketing, and validation. Monitoring is particularly important since it enables you to determine how well or badly you are doing so that you can take the appropriate action. Social media marketing is referred to as Social Media Optimization or SMO.



Ana Carla Cunha is the author of this article on Link Building. Find more information on Backlinks here