There are many different aspects of marketing in which social media can assist. Whether you are aiming at driving traffic to your site, generating referrals and sales, or just plain having a way to communicate with both current and prospective clients, social media makes this entire process much easier to accomplish.

There are a few things to keep in mind, however. The simple goal of accumulating connections through social media outlets is not the only thing necessary for a successful business. Having lists of thousands of followers or friends in your various social media platforms may be nice, but it will not make you the successful businessperson you are striving for if nobody does anything but make small talk.

You want to establish a plan for not only obtaining these followers, but converting them into actual paying clientele. Another option would be to add them as associates or affiliates. Its important to have some type of product or service each of these potential clients can relate to, in reference to their own needs. Yet blatant sales pitches could result in rapid loss of your followers or contacts. Try to find a happy medium per se, where you will be providing quality information or suggestions these contacts will find useful.

Even social media platforms themselves hire these agencies, to create ads for their clients. For example, New York-based Lotame, whose clients include Flixster and Bebo. Then there are Sometrics, Siteheart and SocialMedia.com… SocialMedia is geared specifically to social ad platforms, offering to render ads containing Twitter messages, comments from web communities and data from your site.

Lotame boasts it “goes beyond industry norms by applying a social data layer to audience segmentation”. They call this a “zero waste” advertising solution – and their clients include Flixster and Bebo. In fact, visiting their website can give the do-it-yourself social ad creator some good clues as to what to focus on, when creating your message. Just take note of phrases such as “interactivity over clicks”, “meaningful audience engagement”… “The medium is the message and social ads are the solution”… Their recent new hires include John Thomas, PhD, formerly with Crimson Hexagon, specializing in social media analytics.

In short, there’s some major money and brain power going into monetizing social media.

Further proof is provided in a Knowledge Networks May 2009 press release, which gives statistics for: “Proportion of Social Media Users Who Turn to Social Media When Making Purchase Decisions”, giving the lie to nay-sayers who insist people aren’t haunting social networks to buy. (They aren’t – but they do!) This particular PDF press release lists the following categories as containing anywhere from 10-24% active purchasers in these specific areas:

- Travel/travel services
- Banks/financial services
- Clothes
- Shoes
- Eating out/restaurants
- Cell/mobile phones and service
- Personal care products
- Cars/trucks
- Groceries/food
- Prescription/OTC drugs

The study was conducted through the Home Technology Monitor (TM), a service that accurately monitors technologies people use.

But there’s more… Dell markets effectively through Twitter; Facebook measures ad relevancy and appeal through real-time apps that allow users to “Like” or “Report” ads (with one-click reasons available as to why they feel negatively about a particular ad). It’s at the point where The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) took the big step of setting standards in May 2009.

Which brings us to the inescapable conclusion: No matter what your opinion, it looks as if social advertising is here to stay. How will that affect your business advertising?

And, of course, now that it’s a teenager, there’s a storm of hot opinion and data flying about, now and again, as people debate whether or not social advertising really works.

Predicting the Future of Social Media Patterns

Parties on both sides have brought forth persuasive and often equally valid arguments: Noticing the shift to where ad money is going will give you the ultimate clue. And yes, spending on social media advertising has been increasing so rapidly over the last 2 years that eMarketer has moved all its former predictions on social advertising’s future forward to this year – 2010! Facebook in particular is hitting 350 million participants, knocking MySpace out of the water.

It doesn’t take a physicist or a psychic to predict that social media advertising will have a huge impact on local business too, thanks to the geographically targeted ads it’s possible to create on some media (most notably, Facebook). That system has its flaws – it’s not available in many countries; and on Facebook, if you live outside the US, you can target only by country, which may render that option less viable. But it wouldn’t be a stretch to predict the Facebook developers are working on that as we speak.

Some Things Never Change

By all means keep up with the news and watch trends change in social advertising – but there are 6 principles and facts that will remain the same. Namely:

1. Social media advertising is worth it, even if the percentage of engaged viewers is still small… because for every one active social media viewer, there will be anywhere from 6-14 brought into the fold by that single person. Think of that exponential increase factor – targeted viewers or readers brought in for you by members of your own market.

2. If you are unsure whether the user base is more male than female, or if you know both sexes are represented equally – market to the women. Not only do women nowadays have 80% of the buying power, according to countless net sources, men will usually be influenced or guided by the significant females in their lives. A man will often walk into the store and buy the same soap he’s bought for the last 7 years; the woman is the one who will try something new – especially if you make a personal connection with your ad

3. Tracking, of course, is still king. Check whatever social network you’re considering using, to see what their tracking provisions and choices are. If none exist, set them in place yourself; or else move on to a better network.

4. Don’t forget the double-edged sword of word-to-mouth recommendations in social advertising. Make sure you deliver what you promise – and if you blow it and get a lot of flakk, take it on the chin, acknowledge it – and fix the mistake. (You can turn disasters into an advertising opportunity, as Maple Leaf and Toyota recently did).

5. Remember that the one critical factor your ads all need is a social context. Make sure they are preceded by and linked to social network pages, videos, groups, content. Give your fans a place to congregate, vent and enthuse. Hold contests and polls, ask for feedback, offer virtual gifts. Engage. Otherwise, your ads are guaranteed to be seen as annoying banners everyone should ignore.

6. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater: Meaning… don’t neglect all your other advertising venues – email, offline flyers, website banner ads, AdWords – and track and tweak them all. Social media advertising is best used to compliment these other campaign components, in most situations.

Follow these 6 tips, and you’ll ride out the storms while others are still waiting to decide which social networks to use.

The Social Profit Formula is an online, video based coaching programme taught in six modules:

Module One: Social Marketing Quick Start

This module of Social Profit Formula focuses on assisting you to start making money utilising social media now. It teaches a simple, but proven recipe that can normally be executed in less than 20 minutes per day. It’s truly a quick start guide to going from nothing to social media achiever in no time at all! Plus, this module also introduces you to Status Syndicator, the powerful, time saving tool for speedily attaining social media success!

The following modules from the Social Profit Formula all help to build on the system taught in Module 1, teaching supplemental techniques and rules, plus helping you understand why every technique works, allowing you to easily adapt these formulas for your own line of work and interests.

Module Two: Micro-blogging

This module of the Social Profit Formula comes up second in the queue, because of all the social media tools, micro-blogging is the easiest and fastest to build into a lucrative source of traffic and credibility. It digs into the world of Twitter, Foursquare and many other micro-blogging sites, teaching you how to construct a targeted audience and communicate with them in a way that builds confidence and that conditions them to systematically do what you ask them to do such as clicking on links and taking specific actions. This module introduces you to our robust social media tracking tool, enabling you to effortlessly track real-time mentions of whatever keywords you like, keeping your pulse on the market and allowing you to engage key audiences with solutions to their questions.

Module Three: Blogging and Content Sharing Sites

Many people overlook the might of blogging, but in reality, a solid blog is the base of any successful social media campaign. Module three of the Social Profit Formula teaches how to optimize your blog, turn it into a cash cow, and push tons of carefully-prepped traffic from it into your money sites. It also provides in-depth coverage of content s

Don’t. At least… not yet…

It’s important to remember you are dealing with two different mediums. What works on one – even if it’s your strongest ad – may not work on the other. There are a number of mistakes I’ve seen marketers make, when creating their own social ads, and impersonal headlines beginning with anything even remotely close to: “The Untold Truth About…” – ones that sound like a sales pitch – will turn people off faster than a slap of ice water.

It’s important also to match the ad with the right social network. There are now so many in play that it seems as if there’s a social network for every market – and they’re not all created equal. Besides a difference in sales tracking metrics and flexibility, you also have to consider the demographic that uses each particular one the most.

For example, Scribd’s population leans more heavily towards young male professionals, with college education, whereas MySpace’s demographic is the 17-21 year old age group (usually non-spenders, except on electronic items such as iPhones, music and gaming systems).

But no matter what platform you finally pick, you won’t get anywhere with the sort of sales pitches that sound like the beginning of a TV commercial: The sort that wake you up at night, while their presenters enthusiastically shout about the latest gadget.

Remember that social advertising is just that… social. Nobody’s really got the ultimate handle on it yet… but when it comes to social advertising for your business, remembering you’re supposed to be interacting, and that a give and take has to go on with your fans, will go further than the cleverest headline.

Social media is how people can share informational online content. There are many different formats and platforms which are available for those wishing to add social media to their online marketing strategies. Online social media or networking websites are quite similar to traditional communities. They give people a place to come together to discuss common topics, or search for particular goods and services.

Social media can be as simple as instant messages or something as complex such as creating a squeeze page within a blog. All of these methods can be used to help you market the goods or services you have to offer.

By having this personal interaction with those who frequent your social media platforms, you are not only helping them with their own personal situations. You are providing yourself with a presence online. This presence is one your readers, customers and potential clients will grow to appreciate, and knowing youre aware of whats going on and reaching out to provide guidance or clarification whenever needed shows a lot about the kind of business you run.

One of the first and easiest ways to measure how your social media platforms are working is by the number and tone of your blog readers comments. Their participation can provide you with valuable information as to whether or not you are meeting their needs. Another way to see how your current setup is doing is perhaps a more pleasurable one.

Once you see an increase in sales, you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that for now, your plan is working in your favor. Just keep track of these things on a regular basis, to make sure your current lineup continues to be successful.

If you haven’t yet checked it out, relax: There are more marketers hiding this sort of guilty secret than they care to admit. (It’s called “overwhelm”). So first let’s take a look at exactly what Digg offers.

Think of finding a patch of really beautiful flowers, digging it up and transporting it to a communal garden or park, for everyone to enjoy. That’s basically Digg’s mandate with online content.

Then Digg users vote on it. If it gets enough vote, it’s transplanted to the front page.

Simple, eh?

This user-driven platform means even less dependence on keywords than formerly. The only “search algorithm” doesn’t even depend on a search: It is based strictly on reader votes. True social sharing at its most democratic.

Digg helps the process along by providing tools to make sharing and discussion easy. These tools include iPhone apps, Digg buttons and widget generators, as well as platforms such as Digg TV. It also provides page headers, designs, scripts, logo buttons and graphics. (The catch is, once you place your content on Digg’s pages, under the terms of use, you’re placing it into the public domain.)

Digg offers a number of options for marketers wishing to advertise. You can choose:

1. A sponsored news article placed inline with organic content
2. The Digg Dialogg Package, an sponsorship package “where leaders and luminaries” (from Al Gore to Trent Reznor) answer top questions from the Digg community
3. Standard and rich media IAB roadblocks and placements on home page and articles
4. The Super L Package, a “prominent roadblock experience” incorporating both your message and your brand on a header leaderboard and right rail. Includes rich media options
5. The Slider Package, strictly rich media “politely engaging the Digg community” via an expanding teaser ad
6. Digg Content Ads, which are meant to leverage popular, current content the community is already engaged with

Digg’s usage took a sharp rise from 10.9 million to almost 24 million between December 2009 till today’s time of writing, March 2010. That’s over double its population in less than 3 months – could the ads have something to do with it?

Quantcast.com shows its demographic as biased towards males (57%), in the 18-34 age range with a higher than average group reporting an income over $100k per annum. Interestingly, there’s also a higher than average percentile of African American, Asian and Hispanic users represented, even though the demographic itself is 73% Caucasian.

(Quantcast is a place you should always check, before deciding if a social network is aligned with your own target niche. It can tell you at a glance if it deserves more scrutiny).

Even if it does look like the perfect platform for your niche… as always, for the best results, make sure you actually have a presence on this social media platform, before attempting to advertise!

Perhaps it’s just coincidence that this growth started as the economy was plummeting; perhaps not. Whatever the reason, ads now are becoming more and more user-driven.

Twitter hasn’t yet got an advertising program together – but the Huffington Post is offering tweets to paying advertisers. So it is possible for businesses to make money from social media advertising – not by advertising themselves. Hey, you may not have the prestige and authority of the Huffington post yet, but If you have a decent website, and pick highly related (but not competing) ads – especially if they’re from partners better positioned and more well-known than you – it might actually give your business a boost.

The Death of Advertising?

One thing a lot of people just don’t get: Advertising as an industry is breaking down; just as architectural drafting did, in the early 90’s. Seasoned manual draftsmen suddenly found themselves out of work after years of paying their dues and working their way up the ranks, as college students and housewives with computers and AutoCAD took over. Companies no longer invested in permanent drafting staff, but instead hired people freelance – and fired them the instant the job was done. (Most draftsmen predating AutoCAD who couldn’t adapt are now performing jobs like being a greeter at Walmart… while their grandchildren multi-task on MySpace, text on their mobiles, all while listening to their iPods, watching TV and doing a whack of homework.)

If you find yourself resisting change, one of those people almost proud of saying: “You’ll never catch me on Facebook”, you might want to rethink that, before not technology, but society, sweeps by you in a whirlwind of change. Your biggest warning lies in Google finally being eclipsed by Facebook and other social media, as people search by:

- What their friends recommend
- What their friends talk about
- Online social media drama

The latter includes heated and differing opinions, scandals about a product or business and complaint, loudly voice. Complaints, of course, are your doorway to “filling the gap”; which reminds us that social media is like having the collective consciousness buzzing around in our head, till a handful of the strongest complaints emerge.

It pays to take a hard, long look at social media advertising for your business, and learn to go with the flow… but don’t wait too long to do it: Social media advertising and operation will probably change again, while you do.