What is Social Media Marketing

You must have heard about Social Media Marketing or marketing using Web 2.0 tools and would have definitely wondered what is this all about?? When was the first version of the web launched after all??

Well, to explain you Social Media Marketing, let me first explain you, what is Web 2.0! The following video will be very helpful in explaining this:

This video is one of my favorites and is very informational as you can see for yourself. Coming back to the main topic, every thing that you see around on the net today is Web 2.0 or Social Media (As these are very social)- Blogs, Social Networking, RSS, Social Bookmarking, Photo Sharing etc, they all form part of Web 2.0.

Since all these platforms are user friendly, they are very popular among those on the internet, mainly the younger audience and they love to spend a lot of time on it. Thus, by promoting your site through these mediums, you can tap into a large - highly active set of internet users. However, you need to be really careful in putting yourself in front of this audience cause if they dont like what you say, you may end up getting a real bashing!!

Popular Social Media Marketing tools are:

1. Blogs - WordPress, Blogger, Typad
2. Social Bookmarking - Digg, Delicious, Furl, StumbleUpon and many others
3. Social Networking - FaceBook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Ecademy
4. RSS Feed Distribution
5. Posdcasting
6. Video Distribution - YouTube, MetaCafe
7. Micro Blogging - Twitter (The next big thing on the internet!)

I will discuss in my future posts how you can best formulate your strategy for each one of the above to get the maximum out your Social Media Campaign!

In the meantime, you can read more about Social Media Marketing from SEOMoz.org.

What Does It Take to Succeed in a Business Online?

Success of an online business depends on a lot of factors - your business model, your offerings, the industry in which you operate, the usability of your website, the search engine friendliness of your website and most of all, your intent!

It might sound a bit silly, but your intent is the most important thing which will decide whether your business will be a successful one or not! Take for example Submit2Please.com. The brand basically offers services in the field of link building. We had a good model, interesting packages, good knowledge about the industry which was regularly updated, a wonderful site which was Search Engine Friendly as well. So, what?? Didnt most of our competitors had these?? They did. Yet, why we stood out was because of our intent. We intended to be the "Reliable Link Building Partners" of our customers and always strived to create good value for them. This was what set us apart from most of our competitors and hence, the point which made a lot of difference.

We had good intentions, not only from the client's prospective, but also from the employees' prospective as well. We always provided opportunities to the needy and the freshers. Hence, grooming them to take the first big step of their lives!

The whole point here is that before you start off with an online business, always ask yourself the following questions:

1. What does my business stands for?
2. Am I helping myself only with my site or a larger number of people?

Most people start off a website with the sole purpose of making money from it. However, I feel that your primary objective should be to "create value" for the visitors. Every visitor who comes to your site must go as a more knowledgeable, satisfied and a better person.

Remember, What you chase always runs away from you!

So my friends, ask yourself some tough questions before you begin a business, do some soul searching and get your intent right!