That isn’t hard to change.

Many ecommerce sites already embrace spending advertising dollars on ad space on web sites. A couple of the most visible areas on Facebook have already been set aside for advertising. This means that getting one’s feet wet, as it were, on a social networking site doesn’t step outside of the realm of what is already being done.

• Right column ads and the top banner ad are your typical ad slots, and while the statistics for those slots are going to be typical, due to the numbers of hits Facebook gets, even rotating ads are going to collect a lot of click-throughs.

• Facebook offers ad space in areas that aren’t quite as obvious. Those are the ones on the applets pages. Each applet has a banner area that is solely for that applet page only. Some of the smaller applets may have rotating ads on them, but the more popular applets like Egg Breaker and Mafia Wars actually have dedicated slots. If your product or service has already gained a certain amount of popularity, or a company is willing to lay out the dollars to buy those ad slots, then taking advantage of the applets is definitely the way to go.

• Setup up a “business” Facebook account and working off the framework for that, companies can build not only a user-base of people who are following that company, but an entire structure that doesn’t exist entirely on Facebook alone.

• Have all the advertising interact with each other, in other words, highlighting the Facebook account on business cards and other paper advertising, and referencing the paper adverts on the Facebook page, each advertising section is being supported by the other. This enables marketing to put unique information about services or products on each part of the advertising legs, drawing customers to an overall big picture view by having them seek out the other pieces of the puzzle.

Utilizing social networking sites such as Facebook is still a developing field. More and more unique strategies are available with these social interaction tools. Finding the best ways to take advantage of those tools is still a topic widely under debate. By using some tried and true methods, such as the right column and banner ads to pull eyeballs to your site, any company will be able to leverage Facebook into sales. Facebook gets millions of hits per day, and there isn’t a reason in the world you, too, shouldn’t be able to take advantage of those eyes for your sales.

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3. Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Marketing

Google’s real time search is based on over a dozen new search algorithms and powerful data crunching engines that monitors billions of documents, blogs, feeds and microblogs like Twitter in order to have the most current information available for those using Google Search. Their goal is to have the most relevant information up within minutes of posting, so even the ‘breaking news’ type events will be available on Google Search for viewing. But what does that mean for those of us trying to employ Twitter as a means of advertising?

While not every tweet posted is going to hit Google, there are things you can do to increase the chances your tweet will. The first thing you need to do is make sure your tweets are seeded with current info. Since you’ve only got 140 characters to “hook” with, that in and of itself can be a challenge, especially if your product or service takes a significant amount of those characters to describe. Finding ways to juxtapose your product or service with a current news story is best, since that “flows” better when it is read on Twitter, and it makes more sense in the framework of the searches.

Another tip is to have a website. This way you can use your website as a tagline, and since so many tweets reference websites anyway, that’s not going to appear unusual. People get used to clicking on websites on tweets so having a website available for them to click on will bring hits to your site and eyes to your offerings. And when it hits Google Search, your website link will be carried through.

The most essential part of using Twitter is to develop either an extensive following or to post tweets to a LOT of people. You can open a few accounts and tweet back and forth between them, but the topic matter still has to be current, otherwise it won’t be picked up by Google. However, being a follower of people and groups that are constantly being picked up by Google will help you immensely.

All in all, it will take time and patience and some trial and error when it comes to using the Twitter/Google pass-through to catch traffic. The downside is the amount of time and effort to build up your account so that it does start showing in Google Real Time Searches. The upside to it is once you’ve put forth that “initial investment,” especially if you’ve developed a decent sized following, it pretty much takes care of itself. As Twitter becomes even more socially relevant and integrated, more companies like Google will pay attention. That means your effort will actually pay dividends. The work will already be done, and you’ll be able to reap the added benefits.

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The name of the game for a small business is to make them known without spending a lot of money in the process. However, keep in mind what your target audiences are — otherwise the effort spent in spreading the good word will be wasted. It does no good for an electrician in Boise to have national coverage through their posts, and efforts of a company with a mail-order business that can deliver anywhere to be limited to coverage only in Boise. That means targeting your audiences with your space or blog in such a way as to maintain your focus on your target.

Make your wall posts, blogs, and tweets relevant to your product or service. While it may be fine to express opinions about world events and politics in personal blogs and posts, those won’t do you any favors when it comes to selling to the general public. However, finding ways to weave current and topical keywords in your headlines or posts will ensure they come up in searches. And that’s one of the keys to leveraging the social networks to a small business’ advantage.

Everyone has become accustomed to doing searches, thanks in large part to Yahoo!, Google and Bing (formerly MSN Search). Virtually every social networking site now has some type of internal search. By using current keywords that people use to stay current with events and news ensures that your offerings will wind up in the search results. While it may not seem totally relevant to juxtapose the product or service offering with some of the keywords that work like health care and collectible marbles, but knowing that searches and click-throughs are basically a game of statistics gives the small business an incentive to find creative ways to link topics together.

Another feature of social networks is the fact that many of them allow streaming through RSS feeds. Making your topics and headlines show up in the RSS feed enables a small business to gain exposure to a lot of desktops that may not otherwise find a reason to be exposed to those posts or tweets. That’s another reason to be relevant in several different topics. By joining the groups and following those who are involved in the product or service, a small business can gain additional exposure through collateral connections.

Social networking has evolved greatly over the last quarter century, and never before has the ability to put your product or service had so many avenues in which to exist. It may take some time to establish accounts in the dozens of social network sites out there and to become familiar with all the quirks and nuances of how to best take advantage of them. For a small business trying to reach out and touch a large number of people, even Super Bowl ads don’t have the capability that social networks do.

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The headline is probably the most important part of grabbing the attention of your readers, but it is also the most difficult to form.  The headline must grab the reader’s attention within a few seconds or the headline has failed.  This rule applies to Twitter headlines even more so than direct mail headlines, as the reader can just click the website away if they are not interested. Twitter headlines can be the maximum of one hundred and forty characters long, so use these characters wisely.  Here are five keys to making the best Twitter headline as well as making it SEO friendly.

• When you are working to write the best headlines, the first thing you can do is use the benefits of your products or services in your headlines.  Write a headline that points out the benefits to your target market.  Mentioning the main benefit of your product is the effective way to get the attention of your reader.
• Next, you will want to make your headline as straight forward as possible. Whatever your product or service may be, let it be known in your headline.  You will want your target market to be able to recognize you can do for them.
• Make sure your headline is understandable.  As fore mentioned, you want to get your readers’ attention within a few seconds.  Simple headlines are great headlines.
• The next two keys to writing a good Twitter headline have to do with using the words that get most peoples’ attention.  Starting your headline with “how” or “now” is a good way to get people to read your headline.
• The best Twitter headline is using power words.  There are certain words that get many peoples’ attention.  Cash, love, hate and huge are four power words that are great for getting peoples’ attention.  These four words can also be easily used by most people when they are writing a headline.

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Since the search engine spiders cannot read or comprehend videos you must use the text fields to optimize your videos appropriately. This means doing keyword research and making sure your keywords appear in the title, description, and tags of your video is imperative to a successful YouTube marketing campaign. Maximize on the amount of text you can have in these fields. More text means a better chance of someone finding and clicking into your video. Make sure you use original titles and descriptions otherwise your video will get lost in the millions of videos with similar names. Original content is what YouTube wants to see. The more originality you add the better off you will be. You also want to have a user name with your brand or website name so it is easily remembered.

You have to put everything into perspective to increase views, as the average video only receives one hundred views annually. According to YouTube guidelines there are many factors that influence rankings and can help optimize your videos. These include the video title, the description, tags, incoming links, comments, subscribers, ratings, playlist additions, flagging, embeds, shares, age of video, channel views, subscribers, views, and the number and quality of sites that host or point to your video. You want to interact on YouTube by watching other videos, commenting, subscribing, creating channels, and making friends. Interaction helps with the viral marketing, where one person tells another person about the video. This person tells five others and so on. Doing this will increase your video network and views. All these factor into ranking high for YouTube optimization.

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Of course, even though you more than likely already use several social networking sites, you may not yet be sure of how much those sites can help improve your rankings. One of the best sites to take advantage of is LinkedIn. The main reason for this is that the site already enjoys phenomenal rankings due to the profiles which are hosted on it.

In the event that you already have a LinkedIn account then you can already begin improving your website’s SEO with your LinkedIn account. In fact, let’s take a look at a few simple ways for using LinkedIn in order to improve the SEO of your website or blog:

Step 1: Making Use of Anchor Text and Links

Even though this is incredibly simple, it’s of the utmost importance, if you want to increase the SEO of your site. You need to use anchor text in order to link to your website from your LinkedIn profile. When you create links to your various websites, it results in potentially profitable backlinks, and this is why it’s important to use anchor text which makes use of specific keywords which are relevant to your website.

You need to bear in mind that major search engines such as Google will quite literally scrutinize anchor text when they rank websites. This of course means that if you had web site specific key words to your anchor text, your SEO will be vastly improved. In other words you need to avoid using names like “My Website” or George’s Blog, but instead, you should try to be a little bit more creative.

Step 2: Keyword Focus When Composing Your Profile

When you sit down to type up your LinkedIn profile, it’s imperative that you focus on using the most relevant keywords. During the process you’ll be required to include a headline, personal interests, summary, and also job descriptions and etc. Without over doing it, try to keep your profile rich with relevant keywords relating to your specific website or blog.

Step 3: Add Connections

The importance of using LinkedIn for adding connections simply cannot be stressed enough, particularly if your goal is to improve the SEO of your website. In doing this, you’ll effectively be making your website more visible, bearing in mind that the more connections you have, the more visible your site will be to people out there in cyberspace. Over and above increasing your website’s visibility on the LinkedIn site, you’ll also be increasing the overall visibility of your own website or blog on the internet.

Step 4: Customize Your URL

Lastly but not least, you need to customize the URL which you have on the LinkedIn site, bearing in mind that LinkedIn members have an opportunity to customize their profile URL, rather than making do with the default one. In fact, you can even choose to change the URL to your own name, the name of your company, or even the name of your website. You can rest assured that if you do this it will result in your profile becoming far more visible, and this in turn goes a long way towards improving the SEO of your website.

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2.) Facebook gives us some clues regarding its algorithmic ranking factors.  Read it and understand. Stay up to speed on changes in the Facebook blog, as they will certainly occur. Hopefully as Facebook grows they’ll make a search quality team ambassador available like Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Sasi Parthasarathy. As people learn to spam these results, Facebook will react and SEOs will want more information.

3.) In addition to wall posts, think SEO in tendering status updates, links and notes. You never know who will find it, searching for whatever.

4.) Wall-post external content like blog posts and news should be optimized for important keywords, especially the content’s title tag. If possible post content where the call to action and/or contact information is actually in the title tag. This gets your pitch to the search results as opposed to requiring a second click through to a profile page.

5.) If you want your promotional data indexed in the wider Facebook, outside of your friends, make sure you select “everyone” in privacy settings > search. Though it’s possible users might not be happy if they were aware, existing accounts default to “everyone,” understanding this is a cool inside tip for early success.

6.) When “everyone” is selected, others may see your data regardless of whether or not you are friends.  Reciprocally, users should uncheck if they want to exclude their profile from wider Facebook SERPs. It would not be surprising if users protest when folks start to discover that all of a sudden some of their personal sharing is visible to everyone.

7.) Remember that it’s not only wider (non-friends) Facebook search that matters. Your friends, friends of friends, networks and networks of friends are likely to trust you a bit more since you’re “local.” It’s fascinating to extrapolate the implications of a “trusted local personal search network.” As a user or searcher, be aware of how Facebook search privacy settings function.

8.) Seek advice from other tools Facebook gives us regarding users common social graphs. Lexicon, which is about to get deeper, and the Facebook paid search platform offer cool insight regarding what’s hot.

9.) Contribute continually. A good portion of the physical search results are comprised of social graph points generated within the last 30 days.

10.) Be there or be square! Stay tuned for attributes, in and out of Facebook, may factor in the search results as Facebook evolves.

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While some believe that customer support is the only viable business use for Twitter, the reality is that Twitter has a range of practical applications as a marketing tool. Twitter can mean different things to different businesses based upon their objectives, resourcing and social media savvy. Indeed, many businesses have found their own unique way of making Twitter work for them. Below I’ve listed the core uses of Twitter as a marketing channel:

1.) Supporting

Customer support is perhaps the most obvious and practical application of Twitter. Consumers talk about brands on Twitter everyday, often asking support related questions or complaining about a product, which creates an opportunity for brands to monitor Twitter conversations and respond accordingly. Comcast, Intuit & Telstra are just a handful of brands utilising Twitter to provide proactive customer support.

From a marketing perspective, the beauty of a customer support initiative is that it drives customer retention and positive word of mouth. Negative situations (customer complaints) can be transformed into positive outcomes with appropriate intervention. And of course, Twitter provides the perfect medium for affected customers to tell others about their positive experience!

2.) Learning

For some organisations, jumping head first into Twitter is a bridge too far. But that doesn’t mean they can’t derive real marketing value from Twitter. Indeed, ongoing monitoring of Twitter provides immense opportunities to source immediate (and genuine) customer feedback. Oh yea, did I mention it’s free!

Twitter’s search functionality provides marketers with the best real time customer research tool on the planet. Want to know what customers are saying about your brand right now? Just do a Twitter search.

3.) Informing

The transmission of real time information is Twitter’s key strength. Disaster situations such as Mumbai are a classic example of Twitter’s ability to meet a huge thirst for immediate knowledge. Businesses can leverage the instant nature of Twitter communications to provide real time information to their customers. Sporting organisations are perhaps the best example, with teams such as the Chicago Bulls providing live commentary and updates during basketball games.

Beyond the sporting arena, real time information dissemination can become invaluable in managing a crisis situation. For example, telecommunications company TDS used Twitter to keep customers up to date with progress during a service outage. An auto manufacturer might find a similar use during a product recall. Of course, adopting a participation style based upon informing is only suited when real time information is valuable. If your customer’s can afford to wait for the news, it may be best to consider another use for Twitter.

4.) Promoting

While Twitter is a conversational medium, some brands have found success in utilising the channel purely as a promotional tool. Typically this entails a broadcast approach in which the brand uses Twitter to send offers to subscribers, much like many companies use email marketing. Dell is perhaps the most famous example, claiming they have generated over $1 million in sales via Twitter. Other brands to adopt the promotional approach include JetBlue and Hertz.

A word of warning on Twitter as a promotional tool though. Generally only the largest and most popular brands are successful with a promotional approach. If customers don’t love your product/brand, they’re unlikely to follow you via Twitter.

5.) Building Discussion

Marketers have long been using hashtags on Twitter as a technique to aggregate community discussion. Practically every marketing conference on the planet now produces a hashtag to enable attendees to connect and interact with each other via Twitter. Brands are now starting to follow suit.

Land Rover recently launched the first high profile attempt from a brand to create widespread community word of mouth around a hashtag (#LRNY). They created the specific hashtag to centralise discussion around the launch of a new vehicle at the New York motor show. The hashtag was then promoted in both online and offline channels to generate conversation and word of mouth via Twitter. And the campaign seems to have been a success, generating an overwhelmingly positive sentiment via Twitter, while also generating a flood of free PR within the mainstream media for the innovative marketing campaign.

6.) Branding

For some businesses, Twitter serves as a good old fashioned branding tool. Rather than seeking directly measurable/ tangible benefits, a number of companies are using Twitter to successfully reaffirm brand values to existing customers. Review the Twitter accounts of Popeye’s Chicken and Dunkin’ Donuts and you’ll struggle to detect any clear business objective. But dig a little deeper and you’ll realise that their participation is heavily based around branding to Gen Y. Quirky and humourous messages consolidate their desired brand position in a channel of increasing relevance to their customers.

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Because Twitter can be used with ease on both PCs and mobile devices, and because it limits users to very short messages of 140 characters or fewer, it has become one of the largest platforms in the world for sharing real-time data. A number of large businesses and celebrities have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. This includes personalities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. JetBlue (JBLU), Whole Foods (WFMI) and Dell (DELL), along with other multinational corporations, are among the most followed names on the service. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)

As Twitter grows, it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter — both at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and at the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.

For Twitter to be a part of a company’s efforts to communicate with customers, the customers must be willing to “follow” the company on Twitter. That allows the individual consumer to choose which firms he is willing to get messages directly from. It may not be surprising that “new age” brands like Whole Foods and JetBlue have large followings and older and much larger brands like Kroger (KR) and American Airlines (AMR) do not. Whole Foods and JetBlue have successfully marketed themselves as being “customer-centric” — the kind of companies that would not misuse the access to a customer’s private Twitter information. (Read Ashton Kutcher’s take on why the Twitter founders made the TIME 100.)

While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting. Twitter users have set up their own rules of conduct when using the service, not unlike those with MySpace and Facebook. These rules were not put together by Twitter itself, which mandates only rules of use. Like many social-network sites, Twitter is self-governed by its members, and companies must take that into account as they join the service.

Twitter is still in the early stages of developing a plan for making money as a company, but plenty of large corporations like Starbucks (SBUX) are already using it as a marketing tool. Twitter will probably evolve into both a community of individuals and a community of companies that provide goods and services for those individuals.

24/7 Wall St. has come up with 10 ways in which Twitter will permanently change American business within the next two to three years, based on an examination of Twitter’s model, the way that corporations and small businesses are currently using the service and some of the logical extensions of how companies will use Twitter in the future. Some of these firms are already using Twitter, but their efforts are in the earliest stages of development. 24/7 Wall St. evaluated other sensible and potentially highly profitable ways Twitter’s real-time, multiplatform presence is likely to be exploited — in the best use of that word — to expand businesses both large and small.

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In order to start right out in integrating social marketing strategies with SEO, a plan must be developed first. Moreover, there should be detailed research regarding the target’s needs, most especially since the approach is customer-oriented. It may also be helpful to consult with firms specializing in Internet Marketing. These firms will provide invaluable information and insights on how different approaches work together in maximizing company results. Once you have a better understanding of the various strategies, you can now employ the ones suitable for your needs.

Social marketing involves creating a community where people with shared interests come together to state opinions and ask questions. This can be done by setting up forums or discussion boards on your website. The key here is to generate interaction among the members of your target audience. A vast majority of consumers do online research before making any purchases; forums are helpful in providing information regarding customer inquiries.

Also consider setting up a blog that contains relevant posts that discuss the services and products that your company offers. The information that you will provide may be very well appreciated by your readers. Place links to other websites and blogs that relate to your blog content. Social networking sites including Facebook, Myspace, Digg, and many others might also have useful and interesting content that you can link to. Feature and subscribe to appropriate RSS feeds, so that your readers have a reason to frequently visit your site.

Moreover, it is necessary to keep the forum and blog posts updated and fascinating for people to read. Also remember to use optimized keywords or phrases naturally in your content and titles. Do not let your online community become sedentary; encourage readers to engage in discussions and exchange of fresh ideas and opinions. This way, search engines are more likely to index your site’s content, thus, increasing traffic.

With an effective plan and strategies in place, integrating SEO and social marketing is not a difficult task.

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