Just like how ten years ago, companies were finally coming to understand the importance of having a website, companies are now grappling with the idea of social media marketing. Most people are very new to social media marketing so there are still many unanswered questions. Many people wonder how to promote a social media effort once it is launched. In this blog post, we are going to talk about the two basic forms of social media promotion: blogging and Facebook.

There are several questions that a company must ask itself prior to determining how it will promote its social media efforts. First of all, a company must determine its social media marketing goals, identify its target audience, determine what its budget is, and figure out if any new resources will be required.

Facebook Fan Page Promotion Tips

One way to promote your brand/product/service via social media is through building a Facebook fan page. There are several ways you can promote the fan page both on and off Facebook. On Facebook, you can promote your fan page by placing Facebook ads, participating in groups and other fan pages that target the same audience, holding contests and giveaways to encourage fans to share the link to your fan page, and taking advantage of mailing lists for other groups/fan pages for your brand. You can also create a useful widget that links back to your fan page that fans can use and share with their friends.

Off of Facebook, you can use other social media networks to promote your Facebook content, use PPC ads that lead visitors to a landing page, write and distribute optimized press releases, and do SEO/link building to promote your landing pages. Email promotion can also be effective.

How to Promote a Newly Launched Company Blog

Another important basic of social media marketing is promoting your company blog. When you launch your company blog, there must already be a good chunk of valuable content on it. Think around 5 to 15 posts to start with. There are several marketing tactics you can use to attract attention to your new blog. One of the most important of these tactics is blog commenting. Find blogs that are relevant to yours and influential in your niche and start commenting on them. Provide a link back to your blog on your comments. If you leave thoughtful comments, people are naturally going to click on your link and visit your blog.

You can also attract the attention of influential bloggers in your niche by creating a blogroll and linking to them. People will click on those links and the blogger is eventually bound to notice the source of all the new traffic. In order to build visibility, links to your blog, and a new audience, submit guest posts to influential blogs in your niche.

Make sure to include your blog URL anytime you mention your site URL online. Have all employees include the blog URL in their email signatures and social media profiles. When you write a particularly useful blog post, leverage the social media networks you participate in to promote your content. Most importantly, focus on providing excellent content on a consistent basis. By doing so, you’re sure to attract attention and links naturally over time.

So there you have it. How you promote your social media efforts will ultimately boil down to your goals, audience, resources, and the social media networks you are going to use. Just like you would with any other online marketing strategy, track and monitor the results of your campaign using analytics tool so you can tweak your efforts along the way.