WebProNews

A WebProNews reporting team covered the SMX Social Media in New York City this week and delivered lots of unique video interviews and session reports.

For you eBusiness professionals reading WebProNews here are my top ten tips from the conference coverage that may help you become a social media marketing guru.

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1. Fish Where the Fish Are Participate in social networking communities that consist of people targeted to what you are selling. It is much better to find a smaller niche "microcommunity" where you can have a networking impact than just spending all of your time on major social media sites like Facebook. Consultant Michael Grey adds, "You have to try to figure out where does it fit best for you and then try and go after that".

2. Promote Yourself, Not Your Product The temptation with social media marketing is to directly promote your product or service. Try to avoid this "Amway" approach at all costs! How often have you been to a party at a friends house and someone starts selling something to you. It just doesn't feel right and you usually look to avoid that person the rest of the night. This goes for social media sites a well ... use them to network, don't use them to sell.

3. Get Experience In Social Media Before Marketing Don't try to use social media sites until you understand the communities. Rand Fishkin states, "Go into these communities, participate in the forum before you ever start trying to market yourself, your brand or website. That will give you the best possible grasp on what to do and how to do it."

4. Don't Rush Your Social Media Link Bait Online Marketing Consultant, Brent Csutoras advises not to rush your social media link bait. He states, "Make sure it is a valuable piece. Don't rush your social media link bait. Take the time to make it something valuable. In the end you really want people to link to you. If they don't think your stuff is quality they are not going to link to you."

5. Big Companies Should Create Social Marketing Strategies Social networking is not just for entrepreneurs and small companies. PR Strategist Adam Sherk suggests that enterprise companies should create a strategy for participating in social media. Above all companies should be "transparent" and "visible".

6. Give Them What They Are Looking For Sarah Hofstetter of 360i offers tips when first beginning to use social media. Sarah says, "Figure out what it is you are trying to reach out about, who your target audience is and just make sure that you align the message with who you are trying to reach out to. Find the right kind of assets to promote to those target audiences. Make sure that you give them what they are looking for, not what you think they are going to be looking for".

7. Watch For the Woahs of Social Media Marketing Using social media sites like MySpace to market your product or service isn't always a good idea. Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works says companies should be aware that "people may judge your brand based on the people you affiliate with".

8. Don't Dilute the Quality of Your LinkedIn Network Helen M. Overland of Non-Linear Creations talks about how to bring in quantity without losing the quality of your LinkedIn Network. Helen states, "You should build that core central quality network and then contact a couple of people who are open networkers with lots of people in their profile and add them to your network. You can then talk to all of their first and second degree contacts. You can potentially talk to a quarter million people on LinkedIn this way. That's an easy way to add volume to your network while at the same time not really diluting the quality of your network."

9. Be Careful With Social Media News Sites Social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Netscapeis are very popular and also very tricky to use to your marketing advantage. From WebProNews, "In large part, using Digg as our measuring stick, that involves getting chummy with the top 100 contributors, who control about 56 percent of what makes to the front page." Advice includes creating titles and descriptions that make people want to read more, creating an identifiable avatar for yourself and understanding what they like and don't like.

10. Play Safe In WikiPedia President of Netconcepts, Stephan Spencer states, "WikiPedia is not a very safe place to play. Yes, it's the encyclopedia anyone can edit, but it's not necessarily the encyclopedia everyone should edit."

Give us your thoughts on social media marketing.