How to Effectively Market on Mainstream Social Media

When you say social network people's minds immediately conjure up FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace or YouTube. They are most popular sites on the web, certainly some of the most visited as far used for researching companies, entertainment and information. If you are operating a business that caters to the people who frequent those sites, then by all means join them.

But do so with caution. Most of the people that use those sites are not just there to update their friends and family on the new baby or house. Many people use those sites to turn themselves into instant celebrities and post "unprofessional" comments and photos to gain attention. This is cute if you are still in arrested development and you want to only hang around with prepubescent high schoolers and college students.

So with that in mind, make sure that you are monitor your "fans" and "friends" since they will post all sorts of items that are not business like or business related on their pages and link to yours. This may get you links but it is also going to associate you with them and their lifestyle and antics. So if you'd rather not have people seeing your "party in Cancun" pics tagged on your friend's sites associated with your professional business then chose other social networks to utilize.

That's not to say don't put up your company's tagged, "tutorial" videos linked to your website on YouTube.com, by all means do it! YouTube.com is now the largest "search engine" on the planet. (Yes it's bigger than Google.) So definitely house your "how tos" and "tutorials" on there as long as they're tagged and have URLs leading to your website or specific pages on your site. It's a great organic traffic generator.

Another great traffic generator is to have a "company" fan page on Facebook. This is a nice way to have your visitors show support for your company, product or service. This also means that their networks will see they've become your friend and curiously check out your page too.

Let's talk Twitter. In order to use Twitter properly you'll need to create 120 character "teasers" that grab the attention of the Tweet peeps. The reason you want a max. 120 character teaser is that you will need to leave space for your "short URL" which should link either to an article on your website or blog or to the product page you are talking about in your teaser. Many short URLs can take up to 10 characters which leaves another 10 for anyone wanting to "re-tweet" your teaser. So nothing you've written gets cut off by the adding of the "re-tweet" link. Also place your short URL at the beginning of your message. In this way your short URL will be the first thing they see and not get cut off by the "re-tweet" URL which will automatically appear at the end when someone chooses to exercise that option.

In order to kill two birds with one tweet, simply add "#in" at the end of your 120 character tweet so it will appear on LinkedIn automatically.

Do not drop your Twitter visitors onto a "main home page" blindly. They'll leave. In order to effectively utilize Twitter with your "teasers" you are going to want to use a system like HootSuite.com or Tweetdeck to schedule your "teasers" for timely intervals. Schedule your teasers to go out on a specific interval over the period of a week. Ten a day is a good number as long as each "teaser" is different on that day. You can repeat the "teasers" throughout the week on different days or in different time slots; but don't make them repetitive. This make you look like you are trying to sell something and are spamming the Twitter peeps. Not good.

by I. Vitt Argent,
producer of Biz Talk with Dr. Ande
SEO Tips for Small Business
SEO Tips 4 SME Blog
author of, Dr. Ande's SMO Guides, Dr. Ande's Success Tips for Women in Small Business, &  Dr. Ande's SEO Tips for Improved ROI