[Chuck Hamrick]

We frequently get questions about marketing B2B programs but this article also applies to affiliate sites. Here are some highlights:

Some powerful points of information to consider:

* Google’s +1 button is reportedly being served 2.3 billion times a day.
* Google+ exceeded 10 million users in two weeks. By comparison, it took Foursquare two years to surpass that milestone.
* Seventy-three percent of Americans with an Internet connection visit Facebook each month

These numbers are even higher as this article was published in July.

Two important points from those surveyed in the 2012 SEO Benchmarking report include:

* Content creation is the most effective SEO tactic (see chart below).
* External link building is the most difficult SEO tactic to execute.

An effective social network provides the potential for “free” marketing research on what potential customers really want. “Listening” effectively to one’s social network is the first step to uncovering the type of content that will resonate with a target market and for which an SEO keyword strategy can be applied.

Social networking and social media make the distribution and ability to share and link to goodcontent that much easier. If the right networks are in place, sharing content becomes more effective, and others sharing (and linking) to good content becomes more likely as well.

The last sentence is the catch phrase for me.

Finally the article ends with: Social Networking Steps for B2B Organizations.

View the entire article here:

What social marketing are you doing with your merchant or affiliate site?

[daseoman]

The article is just telling a story that has been going on for a while now.. In this fast pace world social marketing is becoming bigger and bigger because it social media gives instant results and reports.

If you take SEO for an example, it takes weeks and many times months to get to page 1 for hard keywords which bring you a lot of traffic. In the social media, you can get a few 100,000 visitors in a few days if your thing goes viral.. Missing out on such high numbers would be unwise to say the least

Even if you are no expert on social media, you should either look into or get it done from somebody else, to at least have a fan page and/or social media accounts for your business/affiliate site.. Since almost every platform has a plugin to do this, it would be a waste not to use it in my opinion..

[Chuck Hamrick]

Thanks1 One of my take aways is that social should be seen as content. Seems that many businesses want to treat social as an advertising only medium as if it had a shopping cart attached. If you view social as additional content for your products/services you ultimately bring people to your site for the interaction.

Many affiliates struggle with building organic pages then waiting for them to get ranked. If they couple it with social they can extend that content.

[daseoman]

Chuck that is a very good point! As content is king for Google, there is never enough good content that one can have!

The other thing that i was also thinking about is, that social media can bring a business, is also social dialog and involvement from its customers. For example, you can post polls on your social media page and so your customers can be involved in getting your business even better for them.

Also by posting regularly on your fan page you keep a constant presence of your company on the walls of your fans/customers. That way they always have you in your mind and when they decide to buy something in your niche again, your company will be the first they think about

Originally Posted by Chuck Hamrick

Thanks1 One of my take aways is that social should be seen as content. Seems that many businesses want to treat social as an advertising only medium as if it had a shopping cart attached. If you view social as additional content for your products/services you ultimately bring people to your site for the interaction.

Many affiliates struggle with building organic pages then waiting for them to get ranked. If they couple it with social they can extend that content.

[Chuck Hamrick]

Yes but you can over do it so I try to limit to 2-3 Facebook/Tweets a week.

[josegordon123]

I definitely agree. This data only offers proof to what has already been the trend since social media sites emerged. The ability to build relations within the people in your network will make it easier to perform B2B marketing with higher chances of success. It is also one way to build trust in your readers and naturally promote your content/site.