Social media: How useful is it for online marketing?

Social media is an increasingly popular medium in which virtually anyone with internet access can add internet content. Almost any of these sites has some potential for commercial usefulness, but you need to be careful.

Here is a quick guide to a small sample of popular social media sites and their marketing usefulness.

Digg

Digg is a very popular social bookmarking site where people ‘digg’ (bookmark) the sites they like. You can add your own submission, but getting a lot of people to ‘digg’ your site by providing worthy content could provide an enormous increase in traffic.

A word of warning – Don’t get everyone in your office to ‘digg’ you – the editors will recognise the same IP address and your account may get banned.

Technorati

An enormous blog database – it allows you to see who’s talking about you, and who’s linking to you. This information is important for your visibility. The direct marketing potential is limited, but it is a great resource for information on how people see your company and your competitors.

Netscape

Netscape 2.0 is a user-generated site, moderated by editors, that concentrates on current events, particularly financial or political themed stories. Anyone can contribute, providing links and referrals, and vote on the stories submitted. This site has the potential to generate a lot of traffic, but the stories provided should be related to current events to achieve a high ranking.

Wikipedia

This is one of the most popular social media sites – almost any search term will come up with a Wikipedia result near the top of results pages. It is a reference website in which anyone can contribute, modify and edit the articles. There is a box for external links related to the articles. Only contribute an article or a link if it is genuinely informative and relevant – An advertisement will get deleted immediately.

It is important to keep track of what is being said about you here – remember anyone can edit wikipedia entries.

Stumble Upon

This is a tool that allows you to browse the internet according to your interests without typing anything in. You need to download the toolbar, choose your topics of interest, and click ’stumble.’ Visitors can vote for a site they’re on by clicking the thumbs-up button. the more people who click this, the more traffic you’ll get.

This is a fantastic marketing tool – but, again, you need to make sure your content is worthy.

Flickr

A social photo sharing site, where you can upload your interesting pictures and provide a link to your website. If you get to the top of a search, you could get a lot of website traffic.

Myspace

A hugely popular social site, where users create webpage with a profile, pictures and a blog. If you want to harness this site, be careful – it is not designed for marketing purposes. It is mostly younger people collecting ‘friends’ and discussing dating. The site can generate visibility, but it is best used only for certain kinds of businesses (probably not financial brokers, for example), or to get links, but only if it’s done correctly.

With all forms of social media, be careful – sometimes it is better to not advertise than to advertise in a way that might damage your reputation. You don’t want to be labelled a spammer. Use social media responsibly.