When it comes to online social networking, there are numerous different websites to choose from that

According to Kosciewicz, the Web today has grown into an “architecture of participation” that facilitates

All Social Bookmarking sites provide a refreshing change for user oriented search. Setting bookmarking tags provide a much better system as compared to categories because unlike a browser – you can use more than one tag. Social Bookmarking will be the future of searches because its powered by humans; assessed by humans and voted on by humans!.

In the old days. If you are looking for a great blog to read in the morning then you will love the chance to find out the most popular blog via your favorite bookmarking site!. Tagging is using single words or phrases (separated by commas or spaces) to describe the links you are posting on these Social Bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking saves uploading a bunch of urls to your domain or remembering to send them to your Aunt Sally before you visit on the off chance you’ll need to remember that special something while you’re away. About 6% of my referrers this month are http://del.icio.us related including .8% off the home page meaning that people click on my link when they see it pop up in their RSS feed.

Social bookmarking sites also help you to meet other people who are interested in the same topics you are and who may also have knowledge of web resources that you don’t. But by organizing your bookmarks online; you can help yourself (getting organized/ getting my content exposed) and help others at the same time to finding great content. Watch out for typos. . Put Social Bookmarking on Autopilot!

Plus! Higher Conversions

Here’s the final key ingredient… and that’s the fact that social marketing means that the huge flood of EXTRA traffic you are going to get on your site is already PRE-SOLD. You already have a relationship with them… and they are going to convert into customers at a rate you haven’t seen since your grandmother visited your lemonade stand when you were a kid.

It’s this simple… people like to buy from people that they already know, like, and trust. And your social marketing campaign will give you the kind of presence so that people already KNOW you, LIKE you, and TRUST you before they even hit your web site. It’s not rocket science.

In a recent test performed by a well respected marketing analysis firm MarketingExperiments.com, a site that runs online tests and records the results in their newsletters. They recently concluded a 12-month test where they measured the results of social marketing versus buying paid traffic to a series of 4 sites.

Here is what they found…

Using social marketing, they were able to generate over 93,000 visitors to their sites, paying an employee to do the social marketing work for a total of $3600 during that time, resulting in a total cost per visitor of 4 cents.

Then they ran a one month test driving traffic from Google AdWords. Using that strategy, they obtained 2,057 visitors after investing $1,250 in click costs, resulting in a cost per visitor of 61 cents. Four 4 cents versus 61 cents – social marketing yielded a 1,427% better return on their investment. Not bad!

By now I’m sure that you’re foaming at the mouth, wanting to dive in and take advantage of the huge opportunity that Social Marketing presents.

My newest product devoted to applying the techniques of getting traffic from social networking, involves three sites that will get your social marketing off to a great start. They are MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. In my videos I show you why they work and how to set them up to get the fastest results.

There are no secrets! It’s all about creating a presence on each one, developing friends and a relationship with your friends! The rest (traffic) comes naturally when you use social networking the right way!

I have compiled a list of Social Bookmarking websites from a number of sources. You can find it here: http://www.blogmarketingtactics.com/social-bookmarking/social-bookmarking-top-links.html

Once you have bookmarked them, you can view them, sort them by category/keyword as well as see links from others that have been categorized like yours.

You also establish RSS feeds for each category (tag) that you ‘subscribe’ to. This alerts you to new links in your areas of interest. Your bookmark collection/RSS Feed becomes viewable to others who can also copy your bookmarks to their own collection. So now you can aggressively promote your RSS feed to the RSS Directories and Search engines, syndicate them and make them available to a much wider audience.

Social bookmarking sites also help you to meet other people who are interested in the same topics you are and who may also have knowledge of web resources that you don’t.

On Social Bookmarking sites, you first create an account. Then you bookmark interesting and useful things in the area of your interest or expertise. By doing so you create a useful Feed. Once you’ve done that you intermittently, (or aggressively), add useful and interesting items, (that could use additional exposure), from your own content. Make an honest effort to contribute USEFUL information and links. This is all about sharing and exposure. Done properly, you can be as aggressive as you want to be about sharing information. You can share your blog(s), links to your informational/resource sites etc. Think about the fact that when you share links to other’s resources, you’re also effectively promoting their content as well.

This is a way you can aggressively and ethically promote your content and the content of others. I personally have hundreds of gigabytes of my own information and information of others, connected to my notebook. In the final analysis, it’s doing me no good what-so-ever just sitting there. But by organizing it, online, I can help myself, (getting organized, getting my content exposed, etc.) and help others at the same time.

If you spice up your feed with too much sales and marketing related or self promotional stuff, people can and will easily drop their subscription to your feed. And instead of gaining good will and doing a service to the internet community you could get labeled as a spammer and suffer the consequences.

So while being aggressive is possible and acceptable, being careful to consider the best interest of the community is certainly warranted.

Balancing being ethical and providing a useful service to others with promoting your own content enables you to be as aggressive as you like. But remember, in the final analysis, others will make the decision on whether it’s ethical and useful or spam.

Most of the consumers these days do all of their shopping and research about the products online. In fact that is where many of us spend lots of our time each and every day. As a business, or a person offering a product or service, it is essential that you meet individuals where they are, as opposed to trying to force messages on them when they are not receptive to them. So by establishing yourself with social marketing campaigns, you are reaching out to that huge pool of individuals that shop online, researches products on-line, and normally favor to communicate over that medium.

Another big reason why it’s so significant to have an effective social marketing strategy is because in all likelihood, some of your major competition already does. If you’re the one company or person who is lagging behind the times, that’s going to come back to trouble you later. They are the ones who would be enjoying the increased presence, the low costs of finding new customers, and more. By not getting involved for yourself, you’re giving your competition a major edge.

Lastly you must forget that the keyword is a very effective social marketing strategy. Individuals these days will be able to sniff out bogus attempts by companies to try to be “cool” by being involved with social networking a mile apart. You can’t simply sign up for a service and then expect profits to roll in. You have to really be a member of the community, and you have to provide people with something of value in order to gain and hold their attention and trust. Otherwise, all of your efforts would ultimately be wasted.

One of the ideas that you can include into your social marketing campaigns is making them as specific and highly targeted as possible. Do not merely try to target “new clientele”. Instead, if you promote sporting goods try to build a campaign focused on driving 25-35 year old male sports fans with a reasonable amount of disposable income to your web-site, for instance. In this way you would really be capable of appealing to a group and change with your efforts quickly and effectively.

Naturally, this is merely the start when it comes to the significance of social marketing strategy and how you could develop one for yourself. Bear in mind, when you’re not running social marketing campaigns, your competition is, and they’re gaining that advantage, reaching customers where they are available and receptive, and finding new prospects and customers. Get started for yourself and watch how amazingly successful you can be simply by deploying a worthwhile social marketing strategy for your business.

The term “Social Marketing” was probably coined by someone who wanted it to seem different from what it really is.

It’s really just plain old marketing.  But instead of getting you to buy a bar of soap, or a certain brand of beer, or a particular service, social marketing tries to get you to do what the marketer thinks is “good for society.”

So they tell you.

Social marketing seeks to sell ideas, attitudes, and behaviors.  Issues which have been targeted by social marketing campaigns include:

Pollution
Drunk Driving
AIDS Awareness
Substance Abuse
Early Cancer Detection
Fire Prevention
Disaster Readiness
Energy Conservation
Blood Drives
Medical Research Fundraising
Water Quality and Conservation

And it would be hard to find someone who would argue that these issues are not important.

Social marketing provides a mechanism for tackling such problems by encouraging people to voluntarily adopt a specific behavior.

Don’t smoke
Don’t over-water your lawn
Don’t pollute
Recycle glass and plastic bottles
Get out and vote

When planning social marketing campaigns, marketers know it is essential that an emphasis is placed on the audience’s perceived needs.  That’s because the ultimate objective of social marketing is to influence action.  Achieving that goal is a much more ambitious — and more blurred — bottom line.

After all, how are “they” to know if you are really turning off the water when you brush?

I’m Your Friend, and I Have Your Best Interest at Heart.  Really, I Do.  Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain.

Social marketers feel “I’m my brother’s keeper.”

“Do what I want you to do; it’s good for you.”  And they are often very sincere about it.  And they may even be right.

Social marketing differs from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer’s organization. 

The objective?  Changing your behavior and saving you – and society — from yourself. 

The planning process takes a “consumer-approach” into account by addressing the elements of the marketing mix.

Like commercial marketing, social marketing uses “The Four Ps” to define the total marketing picture:

Product

The specific change in awareness, attitude, and behavior.

Price

The psychological barriers that often prevent behavior change.  Inertia is a very powerful competitor.

Place

The distribution plan and media channels used to get the word out.

Promotion

Tactics and strategies used to persuade the audience.

However, marketers must often add the following that are unique to social marketing:

Publics

The many different audiences – internal and external – involved with the approval or implementation of the program.  Who’s got their hand in it?

Partnership

Like-minded organizations solicited for involvement in order for the program to be truly effective.  Who benefits if you do what they want?

Policy

The political environment needed to support change for the long term.  Who’s in power?  Who wants what?

Purse Strings

The resources from foundations, government budgets, or donations needed to fund the program.  Who’s got the money?

Changing public behavior is a long-term process.  Like all social marketing, it requires increased education and the repetition of messages.

Successful Campaign Examples

Social marketing has targeted a number of issues:

In Seattle, the “Get-in-the-Loop” campaign used retail partnerships, on-shelf signage, paid advertising and media relations to increase the purchase of recycled content products by 27 percent.
More than 52 percent of the U.S. population recognizes the Energy Star label due to public service advertising, media relations and retail, manufacturer and utility partnerships.
The average seat-belt usage rate in North Carolina jumped from 65 percent to over 80 percent in the first six months of the “Click It or Ticket” campaign.  In addition, the campaign is credited with producing a 14% reduction in traffic fatalities
The percent of Florida middle schoolers who smoked cigarettes fell from 18.5 to 8.6 percent while the percentage for high schoolers went from 27.4 to 20.9 as a result of the Florida “Truth” anti-smoking campaign.
PeachCare for Kids, created by the Georgia legislature in spring 1998, is designed to provide children’s health insurance for working-class families.  This program has helped 57,000 children and accepts applications at the rate of 500-1,000 per day.
Results for Switzerland’s “Stop AIDS” campaign indicated that between 1986 and 1990, condom sales had increased by 80 percent (from 7.6 million to 15 million units).  Condom use among 17-30 year-olds increased from 8% to almost 50%. Condom use among 31-45 year-olds also increased during that time (from 22% to 35%).
The “Florida’s Water:  It’s Worth Saving” campaign (which I helped create) achieved all objectives for the St. Johns River Water Management District, and post-campaign research revealed 89% resident compliance with local water restrictions.

Human nature never changes.  But human thinking does.  There was a time that most people thought it was cool to smoke.  Now, smoking is something you try to “quit.”

Social marketing helped make that happen . . . for better or worse. 

Conclusion

Successful social marketing uses carefully crafted — and often crafty — messages that make an emotional connection.  It can fundamentally change behavior to save lives, sustain the environment, and make communities more livable.

It can also trick you into following a social agenda.

The average consumer is exposed to 3,000 messages per day. To effectively compete with this message overload, social marketing must reach its target several times through different mediums before an impact can be expected.

A good messaging platform is simple and provides both knowledge and motivation needed for the audience to act. 

And the best tell the truth . . . and tell it well.

Following these steps will start a path to a social marketing campaign that delivers measurable results.

The question is . . . do you want to do what “they” want you to do?  Do you have all the information you need to make an informed decision?

Regardless of what “they” want . . . it’s still up to you.