Ways to Create Content for Social Media and Search

Marketers have been talking about social media and using it as their primary online marketing tactics to drive traffic and qualified leads to their site, business, brands, etc. Some of the obvious tools are twitter, digg.com, stumbleupon, delicious, facebook, myspace, linkedin, etc.

I believe all of those social media tools are powerful, but it has to be used wisely, and have a long-term commitment. When I mean long term, I really mean lo—ng term.
The important thing about social media is not only about the quantity of comments and feedbacks that your throw into the social media space. It is also about the quality.

Successful bloggers, twitters or diggers have been contributing targeted and relevant content to their audiences. When I say audiences, those audiences should reflect people who are interested in you, your thought, brand, services, products, etc. Basically, you have to step up and represent your specialty and serve your audiences like they are your customer.

If you’re purpose to tweet about your personal life so that your family or friends can feel close to you, that is totally fine and ok. From marketing stand point, it is wise to stick to your niche of specialty. For example, if you’re in the field of web analytics, social media will work great for you if you contribute your knowledge on web analytics to the internet crowd. That quality of sharing will reflect you. So don’t just shoot random messages on twitter, and digg irrelevant sites you’re not interested into digg. Keep it niche and high quality. Don’t forget to comment and network though those social media platforms.

Social media is a medium just like your website, which is part of an internet eco-system and it has to represent yourself or business. The important thing to know is that no matter what you do (as of 2009), most of the social media will generate your comment or direct traffic to other web page. What does that mean??
You have to have great content.
Why? Well, eventually if you’re so bad ass in marketing, you will promote your site really well through social media.
If you’re so good at it, you’ll receive positive results (positive result could be increase in traffic, leads, conversions, etc.).

If you’re so bad ass in marketing, people will talk about your site or article. Success in online marketing using social media or search needs to come from great content.

What are the ways to create great content for social media or search?

1) Create relevant content for your audience. Hopefully, you know your target audience and their interest. Create content that inspires them from your point of view and ideas. You first have to listen though. Listening in online could mean researching keywords that your users search online, use in comments, etc. Find out their interests.

2) When using social media, share comments and links that are helpful to the others. I believe karma works well in social media. Be good to others and others will be good to you. Share great information, and they will give you back great informations/comments/feedbacks/links !!

3) Don’t always think about pages to convert. Think about pages to support pre-selling. The majority of people research before making their decision to purchase. Some say almost 90% of online consumers read reviews before making a purchase. Create content to stimulate their desire to want something and eventually need it. Massage your consumers into your great products or services!!

4) Your content strategy should also support long term goals. Sure, technology changes and information gets old quickly. However, have you heard of long-tail in SEM? Well, those dead contents can support your current topics through internal links. Make sure you leverage your old content through internal links and social media to drive conversation.

5) Be creative. I always hear from people who are interested in writing a blog, but can’t because they don’t know what to write even if they have a passion for something. There are so many tools out there for you to understand what people are searching and talking about the topic relating to your passion. Isn’t that what social media is for? Share and talk, and don’t be afraid to write content based on your learnings.

I’m sure I can go on and on about ways to create content for social media and search, but the bottom-line is, you have to take advantage of various tools that are part of internet eco-system to drive your passion or business. It all comes back to your site, follow your traffic trends in Google Analytics or other web analytics tools you use. If you aren’t tracking your site… do it now!!

I’m starting to see some effects from digg.com after heavily participating in commenting and digging. I increased my usage on stumbleupon, and I’m noticing traffic referrals from stumbleupon is growing. They are pretty engaged with my site, too. (low bounce rate, yes!!)

Note that I don’t only promote my site through these social media channels, but I participate in sharing great content. It looks like karma is working for me. Let’s see how it turns out next year. I’ll do my best in reporting back that results to you.