Social media marketing
With social media marketing, you can promote your website and services online in ways beyond advertising and search engine optimization, and you have additional methods to stay in contact with your clients and to pass on information quickly.
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What is social media?
The term social media is used online for various platforms that allow users to interact with each other and share information. They aren't media according to the conventional meaning of the word, but they've become forms of online media, where everyone can be a reporter of sorts. Users can post information that's useful to a wide audience. Since social media is also a form of communicating with friends, users can also post information that's of little or no use except possibly to the users' friends.
Online forums are an early form of social media sites. Other social media sites include blogs that allow comments, social bookmarking sites, photo and video sharing sites, and social networking sites. Sites where users can post reviews and comment on other users' reviews, such as Amazon, can also be considered social media sites.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is using social media platforms to market to and provide information for your target audience. Just as social media is different from conventional media, social media marketing is different from conventional marketing. To market via social media, a company representative needs to interact with your audience.
Social media marketing won't work for you if you post ads and consider your job done. Users aren't interested in advertisements via most social media platforms. However, your target audience will probably be interested if you share news about your company and products, provide updates, allow others to interact (depending on the platform), and respond to questions and comments.
Social media marketing and the web hosting industry
The personal relationships that many web hosts and others in the industry develop with their clients makes social media marketing especially suited to the web hosting industry. That, and the industry is an online industry, so it's natural for users to expect to interact and be informed online. Having a social media presence shows that the company is keeping up with current trends.
The following are some examples of how social media marketing is used in the web hosting industry.
Forums and review sites
People looking for web hosting industry services often post in forums to ask for suggestions or recommendations. Others just read what other people post about providers without ever posting. Those who have used industry services might post reviews, either positive or negative.
Many web hosts have representatives who frequent web hosting forums (such as Web Hosting Talk) to keep up to date on industry news, respond to reviews, and answer questions in response to advertisements. Without a company representative at the forum, the audience may read one point of view about situations that arise. But when a company representative is a member of the community, the company can help protect its reputation when necessary and can be seen as a community contributor.
If a review site allows provider responses, the benefits are the same as above.
Some web hosts have their own forum for their clients and potential clients. With the right leadership and audience, these forums can be very beneficial to the company. However, they take a lot of work and commitment. A poorly run or neglected forum is worse than having no forum.
Twitter provides a way for providers and others to publish short messages to a wide audience at once, including their clients. It's available even when servers are down or email isn't working. Providers can use Twitter to post news about company or website updates as well as news about server problems or downtime. While nobody wants to draw attention to problems, keeping clients up to date on what's happening can help minimize negative reactions and can help create a positive image even when things are going wrong.
With Twitter, users can post questions and responses directed at one other user but with the response published for everyone to be able to read. If you have a company Twitter account, be sure to reply to those who tweet (post) directly at you. Tweet useful content regularly, and you'll gain a following.
A Facebook business page can work in a similar way to Twitter. In fact, you can set up your Twitter tweets to appear on your Facebook page as well.
Facebook has been around longer than Twitter has, and a wide range of people have Facebook accounts. If they're your clients, chances are that they'll search to see if you have a Facebook business page. If you do, and they become a "fan" of your business page, their Facebook friends will see your company name in their profile, which helps spread brand awareness.
Bookmarking sites
You could bookmark your own site at all the bookmarking sites. A more effective marketing technique is to create content at your site that other people will want to bookmark and to include social bookmarking buttons on each page so that users can easily bookmark your content. Add new content regularly, and give pages leads or other content that works well as a quote from the article.
See also
- Advantages and disadvantages of a web hosting company forum
- SEO
- White hat, black hat, and gray hat SEO
Web Hosting Wiki article text shared under a Creative Commons License.
