FINALLY! Social Media in Plain English

Editor Note: I’m proud to have Zeke on as a special guest blogger for us. He is an authority on social media and is a reputable marketing consultant based in the US. I’m sure you will enjoy this article. So Zeke…please take it away…

With so much information about social media, trying to understand it all can be overwhelming.

The goal of this article is to simplify social media marketing and show you how all the different elements in the social media world interact to help you get traffic for your website, exposure for your brand, and sales for your company.

1. Content
When trying to decide what kind of content you should make, my advice is simple:

1. Use common sense to determine which types of content just won’t work for your business model.

2. Try everything else.

3. Measure the results.

4. Keep doing what works and get rid of what doesn’t.

These are the most common types of content you can create:

How to Measure the Return on Investment of Social Networking for You and Your Clients

Editor note: I came across the great article on measuring Social Media ROI (AWAI) and I thought I published it down here.

By Kathleen Cleary

Congratulations! You’ve jumped on the Social Media bandwagon and set up your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Perhaps you’ve even created a Facebook fan page and scouted out some niche-oriented sites to post comments to, answer questions, and start discussions on.

But wait … do you find yourself wondering if your Social Media efforts and time are really paying off? How do you measure the Return on Investment of relationship-building and engagement? How can you be sure you’re not sucking the time out of your most productive hours each day with little return?

If you are participating in Social Networks in a willy-nilly fashion — a tweet here, a blog post there — without much thought to what your true purpose is, you are just a ship without a rudder in the vast sea of Social Media. And, you won’t be gaining the kind of attention which will drive business to you, or to a client you may be advising on how to effectively use Social Networks.