What Online Marketing Methods Are Important For 2012?
If you plan on doing any online marketing in 2012, what are the important methods of marketing that you should focus on? What should you stay away from?
First and foremost, SEO is definitely not dead. You shouldn’t give up on that yet. But it has changed in the last five years.
For instance, if you are out prowling for links and looking for high PR do-follow links, then you are probably wasting your time. But if you are focusing on placing your unique articles on high profile, high traffic websites where they will be seen, then that is a much better way to go about link building in 2012.
Social media is another online marketing tactic that isn’t going away. However, don’t just sign up for a bunch of social media websites and forgetting about them. Stick the large sites with current traction and high traffic. For most businesses, that means Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. If there are niche-specific sites that you can focus on, join them too.
Whichever social media websites you decide to join, stay active.
Video marketing and mobile marketing are two other online content strategies that are gaining ground and look to be effective in 2012.
Online marketing hasn’t changed much in the last five to ten years, but it has changed. Make note of the changes and keep promoting your content far and wide.
How To Do Content Marketing
Online marketers have recently begun using a different kind of language. It used to be that you’d hear a lot about link building, social media marketing, and the use of other terms to give a fragmented impression of Internet marketing strategies. But there is one term that draws all of these concepts together under one impressive term.
That one term is “content marketing.” So what is it?
Content marketing includes the full span of content that you produce to promote your brand. It begins with your own website content, but it doesn’t end there.
Beyond your own website you have your blog, your social media profiles, directory submissions, video content, links, articles, Knol pages, Squidoo lenses, guest blog posts and anything that involves promoting your content in hopes of drawing attention to it.
All content marketing is really about one thing – drawing attention to yourself. Anything you use that does that falls into the category of content marketing. That even includes press releases, forum content and comments on other people’s blogs.
So here’s the question you have to answer about your own content marketing efforts: Are all of your efforts consistent in terms of your message and brand? If not, what do you need to do to get it there?
Content marketing is as much as creating perceptions as it is anything else. What are you doing to make your content sell your business?
Define Your Content Marketing Strategy
Have you defined your content marketing strategy or do you just post random content when it comes to you?
It’s important to create a content marketing plan. This is your blueprint for content publishing and your online business success. It entails a three-part process:
- Decide which types of content you will use in your marketing strategy.
- Plan how you will publish and promote your content.
- Execute.
That seems simple, but it isn’t. It really is hard work. But it’s necessary work.
On deciding which types of content you will use, you’ll have to ask yourself if you’ll need a blog. Will you incorporate articles in your marketing strategy? PPC? How about social media? Furthermore, what role will each of these tactics play in your overall marketing strategy and who will be responsible for implementing them?
Your content marketing strategy should consider how SEO and social media will work together to put your content in front of the eyes of the people you want to do business with. Are they local or global?
Does your audience spend a considerable amount of time on social networks? How much? Which ones do they use most often?
When defining your content marketing strategy, you have a lot to think about. Think about how it all fits together and don’t leave anything to chance.
The Many Faces Of Viral Marketing
Viral marketing seems to be the new buzz word in Internet marketing. Everyone wants their content to go viral. Everyone wants to see their content get distributed across the entire Web, but not everyone understands just how to make that happen.
The bottom line for any kind of marketing is to ensure that your content is before the eyes of the people who will actually use it. That’s half the battle in viral marketing right there.
Viral marketing can often occur spontaneously. When you share something with a friend and that friend shares it with another friend then that friend shares with another. Now imagine that each friend shares your content with five other friends. It’s easy to see how quickly this process can multiply. Just look at how many friends you can reach after going five levels deep:
- You – Share with 5 friends
- Level 2 – Your 5 friends share with 5 friends each = 25 friends
- Level 3 – Each friend’s friend shares with 5 more = 125 friends
- Level 4 – Each Level 3 friend shares with 5 friends = 625 friends
- Level 5 – Each Level 4 friend shares with 5 friends = 3,125 friends
After five levels of sharing, your content has reached 3,906 people including you and your five friends. Now take that one more level and you’ve touched 19,530 people. That’s how viral marketing works.
But what medium should you use to produce that can result? It depends. Where are the people you want to reach? Are they at StumbleUpon or YouTube? Try it there. How about social bookmarking sites like Digg? If that’s where your audience can be found then that’s where you need to submit your content.
The hardest thing about viral marketing is predicting how people will respond. Not everything that looks hot goes hot. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.