Blogging and participating in social media are two of the biggest marketing trends at the moment; in fact, most online marketing and search engine optimization gurus are essentially saying “come on in to the blogosphere!  The water’s fine!”  However, creating a successful blog or social media presence is certainly something that is easier said than done.

There are lots of consultants claiming to be social media experts out there, promoting whatever the social service is the current flavor of the month.  As our SEO company has already pointed out, social media marketing is not just about creating profiles or submitting a few posts to digg, reddit, and the like - and as SEO ROI pointed out yesterday, it is important to realize that there is a difference between a social media platform and a community.

Stories about businesses that have experienced huge amounts of success marketing themselves with social media are all over the media lately; everywhere you look there is another profile of a company that used MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube for fun and profit.  Social media marketing and social media optimization are the latest buzzwords in the search engine optimization and internet marketing world.

Everyone wants to get their content on the front page of Digg, Reddit, and other social news/voting websites; after all, those websites can drive huge amounts of traffic, lead to the creation of dozens (if not more) back links, and of course, help your website get to page one. Moreover, one of the many tricks that a savvy internet marketing company should have up their sleeve is experience with and strong profiles on popular social media sites, as well as knowledge of the various niche social networking, bookmarking, and content-sharing websites.

Creating optimized content that pleases both the search engine spiders and the human visitors is a major part of search engine optimization; however, it is only part of the battle when it comes to conquering the search engine results pages.  This is because once you write that copy, compose that perfect blog post, or shoot that amazing video, you have to promote it.

There are an insanely high number of social media sites out there - just keeping up with all the new developments in that sphere can be a daunting prospect. However, the content and user information on most of these sites shows up in the SERPs; for instance, if you search my first name, my LinkedIn profile is on the first page. Something similar happens for your business if you use your company name in any of your social media profiles. Furthermore, placing links to your website on social media sites is a key component of a solid search engine optimization strategy.

Nowadays, it seems like there is a social network for every possible niche or topic area, from getting a good night’s sleep to online marketing and SEO.  Accordingly, there is probably one that is related to your business - and participating in a niche social media site is a great way to drive traffic to your own website or blog.  A key part of our SEO company’s overall strategy involves researching each client’s market, including any relevant niche social bookmarking or networking sites.  Here are a few tips for taking advantage of these genre sites:

Writing content for social media is different than writing content for the search engines; however, social media and social networking should be an integral part of your overall SEO strategy. In particular, social news and article submission sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon can be valuable sources of inbound links, and any good SEO company doesn’t neglect them when it comes to generating traffic.