As social networking is growing exponentially in popularity and new sites to social network on are popping up everywhere. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense to take advantage of this large number of potential customers. Rob Stretch mentions in his article that it is possible and beneficial to use social media as an additional way to bring traffic to your site. It can also help bring together different aspects of a marketing campaign.

Specifically, Stretch mentions five main ways that social media can help.

• Establish relationships with industry influencers through LinkedIn.
• Use Twitter to spread content.
• Socialize your website by allowing Facebook likes, Twitter tweets, and Google Plus ones.
• Leverage referral traffic from social media.
• Use social media to complement your reputation management strategy.

These strategies can help a company gain more traffic to their website. It can also help gain more interaction with customers and build more loyalty. Social media can be used as an alternative to SEO, but would be most effective in conjunction with SEO. Social media can be used as a marketing strategy, and it can also be used to tie different parts of a marketing campaign together. If your company is not using social media currently, now is the time to start integrating social media into your campaign.

Filed under: Search Engine Marketing