Over the next few days I plan to recap some of the do's and don'ts associated with good Social Media Marketing. We'll discuss some of the following highlights:

1. What to do or not do in creating an effective profile
2. What to do or not do in building an online community
3. What to do or not do for video and image sharing
4. What to do or not do in creating status updates and messages
5. What to do or not do for you blog posts and comments (and you are right, this will be a longer set of do's and don'ts)
6. What to consider about privacy and confidentiality in your Social Media Marketing campaigns

Any specific questions? Feel free to email or post a comment for us to discuss.

It is still true that businesses need to ensure every penny spent produces demonstratable results. That is one of the primary reasons businesses are transitioning to a heavier reliance upon the web to meet their marketing needs. More and more budget is being allocated to Internet marketing because it’s measurable and has proven to increase ROI.

As always, 2009 has provided a greater assortment of Internet marketing methods with the most effective strategies focusing on establishing credibility and trust (people only buy from companies that they trust) and directing your marketing to target a specified and correct demographic for your product or service.

Credibility, as advocated by Internet Marketing experts at WSI, depends on how well a site is designed and built, how many quality websites link to your website, how much social media and buzz surrounds your domain, how fast a website loads, how unique and substantial your website’s content is, and how fast your website is growing and changing.

Based on these observations, what do we see as the Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2010? Well, here we go:

1.   Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Web sites in the top of the search results are viewed as the leaders of their industry, and more than 80 percent of Web users click on the first listings. Good SEO will consistently deliver a huge return on investment.
2.   Keyword Research – Everything revolves around discovering what words, phrases and content your customers are searching for online.
3.   Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn – Social media marketing engages customers on a personal level, and can rapidly create buzz around a product, brand or business. 
4.   Video Marketing – This is becoming more important both on-site and off-site. Videos help convert website visitors into sales. In universal search results, people tend to click on links with videos more than those without – even if the video link is ranked lower and you also can tap into the power of www.youtube.com  and www.tubemogel.com
5.   Online Public Relations – This builds credibility online, in the mainstream media and for potential customers. Online public relations, providing you write it correctly for an on-line medium using relevant keywords, can help create lots of buzz about your site through bloggers and industry sites, and can help boost organic SEO.
6.   Link Building – From the search engine’s point of view, a credible and popular website has lots of links pointing to it. This helps your rankings provided you managing an appropriate linking strategy.
7.   Blogging – Blogs provide additional site content (which search engines love), graphics and other viral content to disseminate information and tie in with social media. Blogs can build your credibility by establishing your website as a hub for industry information.
8.   Web Design, incorporating persuasion architecture – A good website design will keep visitors on your site and help sell your products or services. After all, it is still all about a website that is easy to navigate, has good persuasion architecture and in the end works for you.
9.   Paid Search Marketing – Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an extremely targeted tactical strategy using Google and Facebook with measurable, immediate results that can be reduced as your organic search strategy begins to engage. 
10.   Email Marketing – Nurture relationships and retain existing customers. It’s much easier to keep old customers than to get new ones. Send good offers and valuable information that’s customized to their needs.

If these strategies are properly developed and implemented, you should expect to have unparalleled success with your Internet marketing program. This success is based upon a combination of all these strategies to drive traffic to your site, establish credibility for your brand and convert traffic into sales,

WSI is an Internet Marketing helps businesses throughout Sacramento and Northern California by driving traffic to their websites through aggressive search engine optimization, paid search marketing, social media marketing and blogging. WSI then turns those visitors into sales through conversion-focused website design, development and copywriting. Clients range from small startups to large corporate companies.