Social Media Branding Without Ads

It is increasingly interesting to find that businesses with blogs have not plugged into the countless free syndication networks that are available. It almost seems as if companies are content with their web 2.0 efforts because they are taking advantage of having a blog and posting to it. Well, this is a good starting point but it is like having a V8 engine in a Mercedes and only using 4 cylinders to scale a steep mountain. The upside is you will use less fuel but it will take you longer to get to the top and you will be passed along the way. Most businesses will agree if you have the horsepower, use it.

Enough with the analogies (well, one more), get your social media marketing engine revving on all cylinders and take advantage of the great content your blog is producing by getting it plugged into the top traffic sites on the Internet. More importantly, leverage the power of social media branding for your business in one of two ways; brand your company name or become synonymous with a search term relevant to your business in the top social networking sites. So the question remains, how do you do it?

1. Identify social networking sites that are relevant to your business and/or the content you have available to publish on your blog.

2. Set up profile pages in these sites and set up the profiles (write your content) to brand your company name or your specific terms related to your business. I know this may sound rudimentary but it will make a difference down the road.

3. Set up RSS feeds in these profile pages that pull from your blog or blogs. I recommend having multiple RSS feeds (multiple blogs) that feed to profiles that are specific to certain term(s) you want to get ranked for organically. For instance, you can set up a Squidoo.com lense to promote social media branding and then have blogs like this feed content to a profile page like a Squidoo lense and there are numerous other profile pages on other social networking sites like FastPitchNetworking.com, Facebook.com and Plaxo.com to do this with.

4. Update these profile pages with unique content to compliment the organic ranking efforts and to differentiate each profile page from the other. This will help to build top ranking in the specific social network for the respective search term(s) and help with the organic ranking in search engines (stacked results).

5. Add video feeds, image feeds and relevant news feeds to these profile pages to make them the most relevant pages on the Internet for the terms and or brands you are promoting.

6. Add text links from your profile pages to your call to action pages you are promoting to get ranked. Remember that the home page is typically the worst page to send someone to because it forces people to think (make a choice where to go). Instead, send them to the landing page that has a call to action (buy, enter contact info, etc.).

To learn more about social media branding, email empowermint(@)mintsocial.com.