Brian Rooney, autoresponder expert says:

The news is going crazy with talk about a recession. Remember that it’s in the news media interest to get us to watch TV with scary headlines as they make more money when people are watching.

Brian’s entire article Is Internet Marketing Recession Proof?

With so many conversations flying around the Internet at any given moment, wouldn’t it be great if some of that talk were about your business? Participating in social marketing is one way to make this happen. Social marketing, or the more accurate term social media optimization, is a technique that helps you to generate the sort of word-of-mouth buzz that helps to enliven and grow your business on an ongoing basis.

It incorporates use of online tools such as blogging, community forums, social book marking where users share links, and video and photo sharing websites to interact with customers and build awareness of your business.

There are so many different networking websites that it’s hard to know just where to start if you’re interested in joining the social networking scene. By far the easiest and most effective social marketing technique involves blogging. A blog is essentially an online journal with regular entries of commentary, news items, pictures and video, links to relevant sites, and a place where readers can submit comments about the blog posts. A blog can be included on your company’s website, or placed on a public blogging website.

Once you create your online business blog, be sure to update it frequently so customers will want to return again and again to find out the latest information. Offer valuable tips about your product or service, and try to interact with your readers in a way that is likable and genuine. You can vary your approach by interviewing someone or reviewing something. Remember to be mindful of the importance of including specific keywords that will help your blog to appear in search engine results.

Another idea is to comment on other people’s related blogs, with the goal of sharing information about your business. Try to establish yourself as an expert in your particular field by posting relevant and useful information which will inspire readers to find out more about you.

Participating in forums related to your business is another way to achieve social marketing goals. Try to offer quality input on the topic being discussed, and avoid rehashing what has already been stated further back in a thread. Always be polite and professional, just as you would in person. A great tool to combine with forum participation is use of a Signature Line, a clickable message which identifies you as the poster and helps to generate traffic to your website. Because it’s another marketing tool, take the time to compose something appealing in your Signature Line that will tempt the reader to click through. For example, instead of a salon owner saying Visit Hair & More, a more effective signature would be Visit Hair & More to receive a free haircut!

Another idea for social marketing is to participate in wikis. In essence, a wiki is a page or collection of pages about a topic. Readers are allowed to modify existing content and add more content, resulting in an ever-evolving community resource on the given subject. Wikis are generated using a very simple text program which doesn’t allow the fancy bells and whistles included in blogs and forums. Probably the most well-know wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia.

The Internet offers countless opportunities to advance your marketing goals. When managed correctly, social marketing is a fun and effective way to promote your business.