“Content is the king!” As I always emphasize when talking about ranking local business website to get more leads online.

Since everyone is talking about social media marketing nowadays, some local businesses ask me whether it’s important any more or whether it’s a must for a business to have its own website since social media seems to play more important role in everyday life.

Today I came across this article which I found clear out the myth about content marketing and social media marketing.

“The purpose of social media marketing generally tends to focus on two main objectives. First, it is used for brand awareness — generating activity and discussion around the brand. Secondly, it is used for customer retention/ satisfaction — brands can use social channels as an open forum for direct dialogues with customers, often around issues or questions that consumers have.

In contrast, content marketing’s website-based center of gravity enables it to focus more on demand generation. As quality content brings prospects to a brand’s site, brands can develop a relationship with the prospects and nurture them towards a lead conversion or purchase.”

So, it seems that social media marketing tends to be the natural first step in this process: Access to users is direct because obviously users spend tons of time on social networks.

But as brands become more familiar, the next step must move toward content marketing. Because in content marketing, brands must producer longer-form, higher-quality content and build audiences on their own site. But the rewards and results are, arguably, more powerful. Brands can engage more deeply with their customers through content marketing efforts. And by driving consumers to its own website, the brand has a greater opportunity to gain leads and move them down the conversion funnel.

Then social media becomes a useful channel for brands to service new and existing customers to build strong customer relationship.

That’s how social media and website play together. You can’t miss anyone of them to achieve online marketing success for your brand and business.

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more

Although Google used to include social network updates i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr updates in its organic search results, (and I believe Google is still testing it for some of the keyword search terms), most marketers believe that social media won’t count in SEO the website itself.

Because to SEO the website is totally different than to SEO the social media properties. For example, you can and have to SEO your Facebook page and your twitter account with the proper keywords. But all the SEO jobs you did to optimize your social media properties won’t improve the ranking of your money site directly.

Well, that may not be the case any longer with Google’s official introducing about its +1 social sharing button. What’s +1 button? According to Google:

As the site owner, you would probably like to add +1 button on your web pages and encourage visitors to click on that button, so that the site will likely to be ranked on Google’s organic search results, in another word your site’s SEO could be impacted by numbers of clicks on that +1 button.

We will see down the road how +1 button really plays in SEO. Or at least we believe that Google thinks it really important to have social sharing to play its role in SEO.

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more

Social Media Addicts Association Meeting

I never thought people are addicted to Social Media before. Now I believe so. :O

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more

Globally, the most trusted information source was friends, with 42% of those surveyed saying that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations. About an equal number trusted TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%).

Naturally, there were variations in media trust from country to country, but several patterns emerged.

Internet users in the US and Canada held similar attitudes toward the media, with the largest differences in the US’s comparative lack of trust in newspapers and TV news.

Most trusted media news

Surprisingly to me that, Wikipedia, despite being among the most highly visited Websites worldwide, was less trusted among the countries surveyed than industry magazines, industry Websites and product comparison sites.

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more

Social media marketing consists of campaigns of multiple online marketing methods. Sometimes it is called web 3.0 marketing technology, which is more about a personal dialogue with offers that are so relevant that users feel special. Web 3.0 is about using all the Web 2.0 data, messages, chatter etc. to make business run smarter (=more personal and relevant). Companies that will achieve this will get to a deeper level of communication with their relations, a domain where you’re found before you’re searched for.

social media marketing diagram

To achieve this another model needs to be created, one that is aimed at long durable social relationships instead of one that is focused on conversion. However conversion or sale will happen simply because people like to do business with people they know, like and trust.

But you have to understand what social media can and can’t do.

Social media can engage your audience, encourage online conversations that are user-generated, increase your web presence, expand brand awareness, generate publicity (both good & bad) and provide SEO benefits.

For most marketers, social media has no ROI  but is great for:

• Brand building
• Relationship management
• Product development
• Reputation management
• Customer interaction
• Customer feedback
• Customer support
• Community building

In some cases, social media can convert – usually if you own the community, and have the power to strategically capture leads. Contact your local social media expert.

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more

Based on analysis of use of a content-sharing widget, more people use Facebook to share links than any other service, including e-mail.

According to AddToAny, creators of content-sharing and Web publishing tools, including a popular social media widget, Facebook accounts for 24% of uses of the widget to share links to articles, videos and other content, trumping e-mail at 11.1%.

As of July 2009, Top 5 social media widgets (% share):

1. Facebook 24%
2. Email 11.1%
3. Twitter 10.8%
4. Yahoo Bookmark 5.5%
5. Myspace 5%

In a recent survey, large majorities rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic. Social media was considered less effective, but still good, for internal communications and driving online sales.

Marketers thought the best specific tactics were user reviews, relationships with bloggers and discussion groups through social media marketing.

What is social media marketing?

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more

Although US social network spending will slide 3% this year, non-US social network advertising spending is forecast to grow 27% in 2009. That is 9% growth in worldwide spending in 2009, to $2.2 billion.

Strong social networks outside the US include mixi in Japan, Cyworld in South Korea, VKontakte in Russia and QQ in China.

Worldwide ad spending on MySpace is expected to fall 14% in 2009, to $520 million. Facebook spending is projected to rise 20% worldwide, to $300 million.

Nobody could neglect the power of social networking. Big companies are investing millions of dollars on ads spending on those social networking sites.

If you have a tight budget on advertising, why not have a FREE advertising marketing plan ready. Do you know you can advertise your business throughout those hot social networking sites: twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. for free!

You can set up free accounts in those social networking sites, build your business profile online and connect with your potential customers.  Because people like to do business with people. Especially for small or medium business, you are the business.

Of course there are ways and skills to better network with your potential customers. If you have time, there are lots of courses to learn about i.e. how to build millions of followers in a few week. Or you could hire local online marketer to do them for you.

Original contents from DelphineZhu.com - real estate marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, app marketing, SEO and more