An introduction to Social media

An introduction to Social media

Today we hear the crowd around us talking more about the buzz words like social media, social networking sites, facebook marketing etc. and so many raise basic questions such as

What is social networking?

What is social media marketing?

How can we use social media in business? etc

In this article, I would try to answer these questions in a very simple and comprehensive way, hoping this would help you to get a hang on social media and its relevance in business and marketing.

What is social Media?

The term social media refers to the use of online and mobile technologies to turn social communication into more interactive dialogue. According to Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein social media is  "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."
In simple terms, I would say social media is a collection of ubiquitous online tools that allow users to extend social interaction at online, and can do at anytime from anywhere.

Social media can take on many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, podcasts, rating, pictures or video sharing and social bookmarking etc. The websites that enable this kind of social interactions online are collectively known as Social networking sites, the most popular them are Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc. social networking sites provide the facilities to share their profile, files, applications with their friends or contact and do interactions.       

What is social media marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) refers to the use of social media sites or tools to market products and  services to the targeted customers in a much interactive and cost effective way. In other words, SMM is a means of attracting more traffic to the websites, and more business.

 Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube,  Digg,  Flickr, Twitter etc.

On the other side, marketers need to spread their messages where their customers are to sell their products. That’s way social networking sites are emerging as a powerful new kind of marketing tool. In fact three social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace – are among the top trafficked web sites in the world.

Social media in business

Social networking sites are a good platform to market your products online. Today’s consumers spend a good amount of their time at Internet browsing for new products, their favorite brands and merchandise. In fact, we can social media sites for sell our products and services, to update customers about new product launch and run a online customer service at a low cost.

Social media sites allow business owners  to seek out new customers through referrals from other customers, and to create positive and rapid word-of-mouth for new products and services.

To make your business social media friendly, you have to have presence in these social media sites. We can start our presence by creating business profiles in Facebook, twitter etc. Facebook allows you business or brand have a webpage to tell the world who you are and what you do, at free of cost. You can have an account in twitter, where you can add your customers as followers, and let them know about your offers, new product launches etc through micro-blogging.

Social Media Marketing related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO). Benefits of using SMO and SEO along with SMM are many as these techniques would hep the social media sites to attract more customers towards your website.

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article on Social Media and social networking, he is Social Media Enthusiast and writer on digital media topics. He is a blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM techniques.  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com @ SEO Company

References

1.Technorati.com- Social Media Marketing is Crucial to your Business Success.

2. Wikipedia.org - Social Media Marketing –

AscentRanks.com

AscentRanks is an Internet Marketing agency based in Bangalore, India, provides Search Engine Optimization(SEO), Search Engine Optimization (SMO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) services. We do help our customers to attract more traffic their website and find more business and revenue.

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How to add Facebook share Button to your blogger/blogspot posts

How to add Facebook share Button to your blogger/blogspot

With the growing popularity of social networking sites especially Facebook and Twitter, everyone want to publish everything on these sites. In fact, these sites could be great source of quality traffic for any blog. You can include a Facebook share button in each of your posts. This button will allow users to quickly share/like a post on Facebook.

In this article I would explain how we can add a Facebook share button to your blog that is a easy work to do.

Steps to Add Facebook Share Button above blog posts

To add Facebook share button below post title, simply follow these steps:

1. Login into your Blog Dashboard -> Design.
2. Select Edit HTML option. Back up your layout/template. Click ‘Download Full Template’ option, this help you backup your contents of your blog and if anything happens while editing the script, you can restore this backup to the default settings.

3. Go to Layout then select Edit HTML tab.
4. Check Expand Widget Templates checkbox located at the top of the script window. This will make the page refresh automatically.

5. Now search this tag in the snippet:

<data:post.body/>

6. Place the following code just  before the tag found in step 4:

<!-- Facebook Button -->
<div style='float: left; padding: 5px; '>
<a expr:share_url='data:post.url' name='fb_share' rel='nofollow' type='TYPE OF BUTTON'/>
<script src='http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>
<!-- Facebook Button -->

<data:post.body/>                           -Place the code before the <data:pst.body> tag.

Click on the Preview button to see the result and then save your template.

Add Facebook Share Button below  Blog Posts

To place a Facebook share button under each post instead at the top, you have to follow the exact steps given above but there is small change instep 5.

5- Place the following code right below the code found in step 4:

<data:post.body/>                          - Place the code after the <daga:post.body> tag

<!-- Facebook Button -->
<div style='float: left; padding: 5px; '>
<a expr:share_url='data:post.url' name='fb_share' rel='nofollow' type='TYPE OF BUTTON'/>
<script src='http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>
<!-- Facebook Button -->

Button Modifications

You can also change the button type like adding a counter with the button. All you need is to replace TYPE OF BUTTON from the above code with:

button for a button like this:

button_count for a button like this:

box_count for a button like this:

icon for a button like this:

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About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article, who is a Social Media Enthusiast and writer on internet marketing and related topics. He is a successive blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM and social media marketing.  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com

Search for more at Ascentranks' website, an SEO Company

References

Betemplates - http://www.betatemplates.com/2010/06/add-facebook-share-button-in-blogger.html

Facebook Developer Page -  http://developers.facebook.com/docs/

How to do blog posts from mobile

How to do blog posts from mobile

Here is a wonderful video from Google support team on how to do mob-blogging in blogger.com

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?answer=42448

Search for more at Ascentranks' website, an SEO Company

Benefits of using Social Media Optimization in business

Benefits of using Social Media Optimization in business

                Social media is growing day by day and customers become more glued to the news and updates coming on social networking sites, which help the social media to grow further. As a business owner, you cannot block its overwhelming growth nor hide what is being told about your products and services online. Only thing what we can do is leverage it for your business, use it to promote your services to the customers, interact with the customers real-time and increase chance to retain them, increase your brand image etc.

Below listed some of the benefits of using social media optimization that I found useful for a business:

1.       Link Generation:

Through SMO techniques you can generate thousands of inbound links for your web site in a very less time. This rapidly spreads the awareness about your business on the web and hence more potential customers.

2.       Establish Brand Equity:

SMO techniques allow you build a good brand image online. As more and more users get to know about your web site, your brand gains power and popularity, and thus you earn that cutting edge over the competitors.

3.       Increased Web Traffic:

The amount of web traffic to your website incredibly increases in a very short span of time with proper SMO implementation. It is the cheapest way of driving more potential customers to your website and it will make the website popular which further motivates more internet users to browse through it.

4.       Increased customer base:

More traffic volume to your website means more chances of conversions online and increased customer base for your business. Well planned SMO techniques would allow you to convert traffic into good long time potential customer base.

5.       Easy to implement and Cost effective:

The beauty of SMO is that this online marketing method cost you much less amount when compared to other marketing media and at the same time does need less effort and time to implement. It’s affordable yet very effective.

6.       Faster and Higher ROI:

SMO gives you quick and high returns on the investments. Within a short duration, you can realize your business is start booming.

7.       Lessen the Risk:

With SMOs, the risk regarding ROI reduces as you do not completely rely on Search Engines to drive traffic to your web site.

8.       Results can be easily Measured:

The benefits or returns generated by the SMO techniques can be easily quantified and measured. Today lots of vendors are providing free as well paid tools which measure the effectiveness the quality of SMO work that you done for your site with great precision.

For more similar articles, visit http://www.ascentranks.com

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article on benefits of Social Media in business, he is Social Media Enthusiast and writer on digital media topics. He is a blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM techniques.  You can reach out to him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com @AscentRanks an seo company India

References

1. Social Media Optimization , Wikipedia
2. Top 14 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

What is Social Media Optimization?

What is Social Media Optimization?

In this article I would explain you briefly what is Social Media Optimization, its origin, what are the benefits of using good social media strategies for your business etc.

Social media Optimization (SMO) refers to the technique to attract more good quality traffic to your website through different social media channels and tools. It involves linking your website to social networking sites, from where you can attract more potential customers for your products or services in an easy and cost effective way.

We can classify Social media optimization into 2 main categories:

1)      Social Media feature Implementation : It involves incorporating social media features into the website content for example, adding RSS feeds, social news and sharing buttons, user rating and polling tools, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos.

2)      Social media promotion: This category involves promoting the website content through several social media promotional activities such as blogging, commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and posting status updates on social networking profiles.

Social Media Optimization is related to search Engine Marketing (SEM) in some sense, but differs in many ways, primarily the focus here on driving traffic from social media sites or networks rather than from search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Today Social Media Optimization is considered as an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is not limited to marketing and brand building. Increasingly smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (ie. product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more). Additionally, Social Media Optimization is often at times implemented to foster a community of the associated site, allowing for a healthy business to consumer relationship.

Origin of Social Media Optimization:

The term “social media optimization" was first used and described by Rohit Bhargava, a founding member of the ‘Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team’, and Adjunct Professor of Global Marketing at Georgetown University. In 2006, Rohit invented the concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO) on his blog, and recently updated his original 5 rules with the 5 new rules of SMO and is widely recognized across the marketing industry for this.

Bhargava's original five rules for conducting social media optimization are:

a)      Increase your link-ability.

b)      Make tagging and bookmarking easy.

c)       Reward inbound links.

d)      Help your content travel.

e)      Encourage the mash up.

f)       Get communities connected.

Four years after the initial post, Rohit Bhargava posted an updated set of five new rules.[4]

g)      Create shareable content

h)      Make sharing easy

i)        Reward engagement

j)        Proactively share content

k)      Encourage the mash up

You can find more about him and his activities on his blog named ‘Influential marketing blog’.

For more similar articles, visit http://www.ascentranks.com

About the Author

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article on Social Media Optimization, he is Social Media Enthusiast and writer on digital media topics. He is a blogger and expert in SEO, SMO and SEM techniques.  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com

Search for more at Ascentranks an SEO Company

References

1. Social Media Optimization , Wikipedia
2. Top 14 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

AscentRanks Internet Marketing Agency

AscentRanks Internet Marketing Agency

AscentRanks is an internet marketing agency based at Bangalore, India with industrial experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) services. We guide our customers to improve their online presence, attract more customers and business. We help you make your website search engine friendly through white hat SEO techniques that would provide you a high rank in search results; hence more brand value and business.

AscentRanks has a good team of web marketing experts with years of experience in search engine and social media marketing, who are able to analyze, correct and optimize the website contents through on-page as well off-page SEO methods. These web promotion techniques will make your website high in search engine ranks, and grab the attention your customers who are looking for services. Having a high rank in popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Big and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn is very vital to business.

Good rank in search engine results for a website means high visible the website to customers who are searching for services and products that you deliver, will drive attention of potential customers and hence more business in a cost effective way.

 Why SEO is important for your business?

Websites are a good source of income if managed properly with quality content and white hat SEO techniques, which can provide you more business online. Moreover that, marketing your business online has a great influence and reach on your customers than the traditional marketing techniques. Today as per the latest statistics there are around 19 billion indexed web pages on the web and the number of internet users is reaching 2 billion and it is growing exponentially.

Businesses from all sizes, from start-ups to corporate are today increasingly using online marketing methods to leverage the potential of web and find it much more effective in terms of cost and revenue. The success of social networking sites also terribly increased the use of Internet for marketing business. Among these billions of websites orbiting around the World Wide Web, how can your website grab the attention of customers who are looking for your products or services? That implicates the use of search engine optimization techniques to you website. Well planned online marketing methods can keep your website at high rank in search engines.


Have you started thinking about increasing your web presence? Do you have a plan to sell your products and services online? Then don’t worry, you are not at all late. Contact us for your SEO requirements, we will provide you cheap SEO packages that would suit your business as well as your pocket.

Firoz Muhammed is the author of this comprehensive article, who is a Social Media Enthusiast and a writer on internet marketing and related topics. He is a successive blogger and expert in search engine, social networking and other social media tools.Works as a consultant for an SEO Company based in Bangalore  You can reach him on his mail id: firozct@gmail.com