Tips for Choosing Social Media Channels for Brands

Social media is becoming an increasingly popular marketing tool for many companies and brands. Social media offers benefits such as enhancing organic SEO, meaning a site can be found online more easily. It also enables companies to get more feedback from prospects and clients.

There are several categories of social media:

• Blogging – Blogs can serve multiple purposes. It is important to have your own blog and to make sure that the content is constantly updated.
• Social networking – Building and maintaining relationships online is very vital for successful internet marketing. Social networking gives you an opportunity to interact with people who share your interests.
• Micro Blogging – Twitter is a blend of blogging and social networking. Attracting many followers is an ideal way of meeting new people, as well as increasing traffic to your site and blog.
• Social Bookmarking – Bookmarking blog posts is simple and can offer many long term benefits. The most popular bookmarking directories include Technorati and Digg.
• Discussion Forums – These forums are great for learning more about your niche, as well as driving traffic to your blog or site.
• Email Marketing – Having a list has always been profitable. The idea is to build your list, increase its value, and then sell it off. You could even add graphics, audio or video to make emails more interactive.
• Video Marketing – Internet marketers can build credibility and drive traffic by embedding videos on their sites or blogs.

The following are the recommended social media channels for any brand.

Blogging

The first step in blogging is creating a blog and then publishing articles on it. You can then bookmark, tweet or list your articles on Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Delicious and Digg. This will leverage your presence by distributing your content through other channels. Blogging is a technique I have used extensively to promote my diet blog which features ediet coupons and weight watchers discounts.

Twitter

Follow the leaders in your niche, engage in conversations, share your new blog posts, learn new things about your marketplace, and look for valuable key words in your industry. However, Twitter should be used appropriately and with moderation.

Facebook

Make sure your Facebook URL is on your email signature, as well as other marketing tools such as business cards.

• Post business related updates on your wall.
• Share useful links and articles that would interest prospects and customers on your wall.
• Combine Facebook with other tools such as Twitter.

LinkedIn

This is a large professional networking website. LinkedIn can benefit your brand in several ways:

• Gain knowledge and do market research with Polls.
• Share poll and survey results with your contacts.
• Show your expertise in Questions and Answers.
• Include your LinkedIn URL in your business card, email newsletters, email signature, brochures and websites. This will enable your prospects and customers to learn more about you.

This is a guest post by Charles. Charles writes regularly about social networks and internet marketing. He also blogs about coupon deals at discount blogs that share weight watchers discounts and ediet coupons. He is currently writing for a coupon site that offers weight watchers savings code and ediets.com coupon code.