We are starting to see a lot of business owners really hesitate to get into social marketing.  Well, I want to assure you that the risks of NOT getting into social marketing far outweigh the risks of getting into social marketing.  I listed a few reasons below of why your business should definitely get into social marketing.

First and foremost, since there is already a huge demand for social sites, of course search engine's will want a piece of all that information.  It's only a matter of time until Google and other major search engines start indexing social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Second, it's all about visibility.  The more people you get in front of, the more people will naturally find your site and your company.  It's the exact same thing as networking in person, just over the internet.  Giving a person a link or having them find a link to your website is the exact same thing as handing out a business card in my opinion.  It's free, it's convienant, and it's easy.  What are you waiting for?

Lastly, and this ties into visibility, but think about how people are finding companies these days.  First, in my opinion is word of mouth, I value anyone's personal referral for a business far more than finding anything on the internet.  I can't tell you how many times someone has said in an email something along the lines of, "Yeah, they are good people.  Here, check out their facebook page and give them a call".   Anything after the referral process in my mind is simply a Google search.  I don't look in the yellow pages, I don't call the operator, I go to Google and type in "Plumbers, Cincinnati OH 45205".  I first use the Google Local search to find the closest plumbers.  Are you on Google Local? I hope so!  Second, I look at their websites, does it look like a website that was made in 1980?  If so, I move on to the next one.  In my opinion, if a owner can't pay for a decent website, their company isn't a solid company and I don't want to do business with them.  You just have to think like a client or customer.  How are they finding you? That's my typical process for finding companies.  I would assume other people's would be similar to some extent, but everyone is different.

As I mentioned before, the risks of NOT getting involved in social marketing are far higher than getting involved.  Just think about it, if you aren't out there, your competitors probably are.  How many clients or customers are you going to give your competitors?

Why Twitter is Becoming Increasingly Important to Marketers

1. Twitter Lists
Twitter Lists are changing the game. They will appear on sites and blogs, which are more than likely going to be related to the niche you are in anyway if you have the right audience on Twitter.

2. The Openness of Twitter
The openness of Twitter, social media and the web in general, pretty much means that your messages on Twitter won't be limited to your Twitter audience. Facebook and other social networks will bring tweets in. People will share them, screenshot them, link to them on blogs, etc. Twitter is a means of getting your message out to more people, but it's not necessarily only the people on Twitter that will see those messages.

3. Building Valuable Relationships
Laura Fitton, the author of Twitter for Dummies, chalks up success on Twitter to four basic concepts: listen, learn, care, and serve. Basically, if you listen to the community, you will learn, and if you show that you care, you are more likely to get more out of your efforts. Serving means providing something of use to the community. If you what you're not doing that, you may be setting yourself up to fail.

4. Traffic That Cares
Twitter can bring you not only random traffic, but traffic from people who are actually passionate about the niche that you are a part of. Retweets are huge in this regard. Guy Kawasaki calls retweeting the sincerest form of flattery. He has a point. He notes that people are willing to risk their reputations by retweeting your content.

5. Staying Current
Being found in Twitter searches (not to mention real time search in general, which is starting to become a main area of focus for all of the big search engines, not to mention all of the standalone real-time search sites) provides a lot of opportunity for exposure. Check out tips for getting found in real-time searches.

6. Connecting with Local Customers
There are a variety of ways you can connect with local consumers and customers using Twitter and Twitter-related tools. There are tools which let you find Twitterers in your area, for example. Another thing to keep an eye on is Google's new Social Search. It's currently just a lab experiment, but could become more. It certainly has potential.

A recent Search Engine Land article made some good points about the potential of local marketing with this tool, which delivers Google search results based on the communities you are a part of. It draws from Google profiles, which include the networks that people are connected to (based on what any person includes in that profile).

7. Going International and Multi-lingual
Twitter is expanding into more languages. If you thought Twitter was important to marketing already, consider that for most of its existence, it has only been available in a couple of languages. Now it's in Spanish, and many more languages will follow. That's not only going to be huge for international and multi-lingual marketing efforts, it's going to be huge for Twitter's growth, and the more Twitter grows, the more potential customers are out there.

8. It's Still Young
Consider that Twitter is just getting started in the grand scheme of things. It's still young. There are no doubt going to be a lot more features added in the future. And don't forget about the thousands of Twitter apps that are already out there that can make Twitter useful in different ways to different people and businesses. Take some time and explore them. Fitton's site OneForty.com, which is like Yelp for Twitter apps, is pretty good for that. It has reviews, and people tell why certain helps have helped their businesses.

Resources from: http://www.webpronews.com

1. Use Keywords

This seems obvious, but use keywords in not only your content, but in your titles, and your updates. If you're writing an article, you have to consider what people are going to include in their updates if they share it on a social network, whether this be Facebook, Twitter, or anything else.

More often than not, they are going to include the title. If the right keywords are in the title, then those keywords are also more likely to appear in any ensuing tweets, Facebook updates, etc. If someone searches for those keywords, they will be more likely to find your content in a real-time search.

The same goes for your own Tweets/status updates. Even if you are not sharing an article, if you want your update to be found, use relevant keywords. Again, obvious, but true.

2. Talk About Timely Events

Simply mentioning events that are current will put you directly into the results for any searches having to do with that topic, provided the right keywords are in play. This is a method that could and (surely is) being exploited by spammers, but that doesn't mean you can't provide legitimate conversation and simply put yourself on more people's radars, without throwing links at them every time.

3. Have a Lot of Followers

If you have a lot of followers or friends on social networks, or even just readers of your blog, you are going to get more people sharing your content. The more people sharing your content, the more impressions of your content will be making their way into real time searches.

There is no easy way to instantly get a bunch of legitimate readers/followers. It will take some promotion. Provide useful content that people will link to and it will spread virally. Provide clear ways for them to follow you (like links to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts on your blog).

4. Promote Conversation

Whether on your blog or on a social network, spark conversations. Talk about topics that people are interested in. This is tied to number 2. The more conversations you are involved with, the more retweets (and equivalents on other networks) you are likely to get. And again, this means more impressions in real times searches.

5. Include Calls to Engagement

These are buttons you can put on articles that show the amount of retweets/diggs that article has. They kind of act as a meter for engagement.

These buttons are certainly not all-encompassing. They only represent the conversation on 2 channels, and not the web in general. I'm sure there are other buttons that can be used in addition.

More importantly though, they provide a "call to action" to share the content. People can digg or retweet a story with a simple click, and you're one step closer to being found in somebody's real-time search.

Wrapping Up

Real-time search is much more basic (at least so far) than say, Google Search. You're not ranking for relevancy. Really, you could hardly call it ranking it all. It's about visibility. That means, you have to get people talking about your content/updates.

Social media by nature is viral. Real-time search is nothing more than putting things in chronological order. You have to keep people talking to stay relevant to "right now."

Information from: http://www.webpronews.com

Microsoft has made deals with both Facebook and Twitter, which will see Bing feature updates from both networks in real-time search efforts. This means that social media just became an even bigger part of search engine marketing, particularly with Google also on board with Twitter and rumored to be talking to Facebook.

Twitter Search only shows you results displayed chronologically, which has really always seemed to be the essence of real-time search to me anyway. But Bing has a "Best Match" option, which attempts to give certain tweets more weight than others.

Bing weighs tweets by follower counts. "If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher," says Bing. "If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower."

This is of course the earliest stage for any kind of algorithm Bing may have in place for its Twitter search feature. The feature is still in beta after all. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes more details available for how it ranks tweets moving forward. This could be a whole new nut to crack for SEOs. Consider that Bing results will be taking over for Yahoo if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal goes through, plus there is still Google's Twitter results to worry about.

Yet another reason to join in the social networking game.

Here are 5 tips to help you get found in real-time searches.

Press releases are a form of online marketing that we don't discuss very often. They don't have the new and exciting appeal of social media or even search engine marketing, but they've been around a lot longer and are still working. In fact, they can play right into those other forms.

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic -- and potential prospects -- to a small business' Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson tells WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn't believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"If you want a release to rank highly in search engines you have to use key words and link those to your Web site," says Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent, the subject of the case study.  "In addition, you need to put them in the release a few of times, for example in the headline, the sub-headline and again in the body. This is different from a traditional news release with a catchy headline where you may not have your key words included." 

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," adds Figueredo.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we've seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

Some have suggested that Twitter could actually replace the press release. I wouldn't go that far, but it provides a complimentary service for announcing news quickly. The press release just has much broader potential. That hasn't stopped at least one company from offering a service that provides one line "Twitter-style" press releases.

When we think of press releases, we often think of distribution, which is a huge part of it definitely. But when using a newswire service like PRWeb, BusinessWire, PRNewswire, etc., don't forget about your own website as well. Earlier this year I discussed how some companies' own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them.

Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You'd be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made.

Another thing I notice is that many company press pages also do not have RSS feeds set up. Some offer different kinds of press alerts, but otherwise, they are relying on people to frequently check back to see what is happening. Google does this well. They announce a lot of their news via their wide range of blogs, and while their press release section doesn't get nearly as many updates, they offer a feed so that users know when it has been updated. They also provide links to other press-related resources where their latest info can be obtained.

The bottom line is that press releases inform interested parties of what is going on with your business. Despite their name, they're not just about the press anymore. The web has made them available to anyone. Social media is an extension of this, and opens up the opportunity for sharing. Search engine rankings of course bring releases right to searchers. Make your releases good.

 Entry from: http://www.webpronews.com

There is an endless number of social media sites out there.  So how do you decide which to use for your business?

I believe there are 4 fundamental reasons you are using social media sites in the first place.  1.) To draw more traffic to your website, and in return increase sales.  2.) To expand your network of professionals.  3.) To make people aware of your business and what you do.  4.) Keep up with the latest industry trends from other business professionals you meet and network with.

Here are 3 social sites that I believe every business and consultant should utilize to increase their sales and network with professionals in their industry.

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn

It’s true that there may be a few better social sites such as YouTube that fit your specific business better.  But those 3 I feel any business can utilize to bring value to their firm.