Marketing No Brainers

Blogging, Facebook, Social Marketing, and You

June 18th, 2008Social Marketing

A few years ago blogging was “out there.” Bloggers were people way ahead of the Internet curve. Now blogging is taken for granted. You hear about it on the evening news. You read blogs whether you realize it or not.

The real revolution caused by blogging was that anyone could have a website where they could share their ideas, opinions, and products with the virtual world. Platforms like Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress.com made it easy to instantly start blogging without paying a penny - no need for a domain name, no need for web hosting.

When WordPress made their software public and free of charge, the real blogging revolution started. Now bloggers could have a blog that they were in control of, on their own domain and on their own hosted server. This site was originally a Blogger blog, and two years ago I imported it into my WordPress install at this domain.

Now it has come to my attention that some of you aren’t blogging yet. Why not? A blog is just a website with a unique type of formatting. It is the outright easiest way to get a site up and running quickly. But here’s the important part:

If you’re going to do any kind of Social Marketing you need a (preferably WordPress) blog.

And why would I want to do social marketing, you might ask? The answer is that social marketing is the best way to get people who are actually interested in what you are doing. Let’s say you are in the self improvement niche. Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc. let you interact with others who are also interested in the topic. And one of the original types of social networking sites would be forums in your chosen niche.

Sites like Facebook allow you to put your blog’s feed, intact, into your profile page. There’s an application you can add to your profile that basically does it for you. How cool is that?

I avoided Facebook for a long time until smart marketers I knew started using it. Even then I dragged my feet because I thought of it as another mySpace. It’s not. You have total control over who your friends are. And if they are not your friend they can see your picture but not your profile.

Social marketing got its legs when people decided that the search engine results that they got in Google, Yahoo, and MSN were really not relevant to what they were looking for online. It’s grown from the original bookmarking idea to full blown people oriented gathering places for sharing information.

If you’re not already into Social Marketing, I recommend you start. You can see my Facebook profile here, after signing up - it should take you to a simple sign up page.

http://profile.to/lowellrieger

If Facebook is too much, start at Twitter -

http://twitter.com/lowellrieger

After a while, say a couple of weeks doing one, the other or both, then there is FriendFeed - aggregates Social sites and your blog’s rss. And you can integrate it back into your Facebook profile.

http://friendfeed.com/lowellrieger

These are by no means the only social sites you should have a presence on. But there are way too many social sites to do all of them. I’ve picked these two because they bring me the most value for the time spent. In my opinion they are the first places to start. I’ll be featuring additional Social Marketing sites in the future, as well as tools for using them.

If you spend some time learning the ins and outs of each site you add to your marketing mix before moving on to the next site, you’ll avoid burnout and overload. And in a couple of years, when Social Marketing is as commonplace as blogging, you’ll be on top of the mountain, instead of crawling around in the valley waiting for the next big thing.

It’s already here.

Blogging Facebook Social Marketing and You
.