Getting involved in social marketing is one of the most important steps you can take to bolstering your online reputation and visibility and gaining position in the market. People often wonder where to start or how to start.

The simple answer is to start just about anywhere on the Internet, and jump in with both feet.

When you start working on your social marketing strategy, your first job is to choose social networking sites and groups that will help you get some quick visibility in general. Networking sites such as FaceBook and Twitter are excellent for this purpose.

But you’ll also want to network in some niche areas, so that you can get some very targeted attention from your niche audience.

For example, if you’re a work at home mom who’s written a book titled “Sanity Strategies for Work at Home Moms,” then you’ll want to make yourself known to your target audience through sites that cater to work at home moms.

Other social marketing methods include writing articles relating to your niche and submitting them – not only to general article directories – but ones that cater more to people who are interested specifically in what you’re offering.

Once these articles get promoted, you’ll find that your name and brand are developing all over the place! Good content articles will get tagged and bookmarked, increasing your visibility in the marketplace.

Social marketing gives you a chance to be seen and meet others that you can cultivate valuable working relationships with. Fortunately, social marketing can be a learn as you go type of experience. Just remember that everything you write, say and do has the potential for being visible to literally millions of people. You’re branding yourself and promoting your business.

Here are 7 steps you need to take to start social marketing:

1.) Create accounts on several social marketing sites: Squidoo, Twitter, Facebook, Google Knol, and Hub Pages for example.

2.) Figure out what your goal is. What do you want to be known for? Give yourself a title – it can be something only you see for now. Back when I was ghostwriting I branded myself as the Ghostwriter to the Gurus.

3.) Create profile pages on all of those social networking sites tooting your own horn. Stop being coy about it – brag, baby, brag!

4.) Build one extremely valuable non sales pitch page for each of the social networking sites. If you can’t create pages but can communicate, such as on Facebook and Twitter, then drive readers to a blog where you’ve written a great and insightful article for them to digest.

5.) Create a second page – but this time, weave one marketing element into it. If it’s on Squidoo, create a module that has them opt in to your list. If it’s on Hub Pages, add one link to your sales page. Twitter about something you have for sale, and so on.

6.) Make sure for every pitch you offer, you offer several valuable free pieces of information. You have to build trust with your audience.

7.) Implement multimedia formats into your social marketing to make it fun. If you don’t know video marketing, learn it!

Tiff

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