Combination Marketing: Your 2012 Social Marketing Weapon

Social marketing on its own works well, but combine it with two other

forms of online marketing, and you’re looking at a powerhouse campaign. In 2012, you want to increase your sales potential, build stronger, more reliable

buying communities, and prove to everyone online that your business,

means business. But how?

Combination Marketing and Social Power

Combination marketing is a strategic term for combining social marketing

with other forms of online marketing. It’s also been called inbound

marketing, content marketing – and several others names, depending on

the site or book you’re reading.

They’re all the same thing really, and when used properly can catapult your business into a whole different social

league. That’s what you want this year!

Progressing To The Three Point Plan

Combination marketing has three prongs, or divisions – social marketing, content marketing and SEO. If you’ve been wondering why your campaigns

haven’t been as successful as you’d hoped, perhaps the answer lies in

strengthening one of these core areas in your strategy. Whether you’ve

realized it or not, you’ve been doing all these things anyway. Now, it’s time to

acknowledge and strategize.

Focus on Social Marketing

Social marketing in its simplest form, means selling on social sites. Think about that for a moment. Do you

actually sell directly from your social sites yet? Do you have enough sales material that helps you get clicks to

your business website? What do your conversion ratios look like for each

site? It’s time to get a tighter grip on this part of your combination strategy.

Enter SEO and Content Marketing

SEO exists purely for traffic purposes. If no-one can find your content, no-

one will see it, or buy from you. How much time and effort have you really put into sourcing your keywords, or

coming up with a great keyword integration strategy? Many marketers

falter here. They believe that any keywords properly placed in content,

will help SEO. This is a false assumption.

In 2012, learn how to better streamline your keyword efforts. Source new and exciting places to

discover interesting keyword combos, and set small goals to track and analyze their progress in your

campaign. This year, you want to maintain an excellent SEO strategy,

because it’s fundamental to your social success online.

Content marketing on the other hand, is a bit more complex. Learning how to

market your content, doesn’t mean creating an article and publishing it. It

involves the art of driving specific traffic streams to your already

published content, in order to get a favorable sales result. How are you

promoting your content online?

When you post a video, do you hastily share it on your social pages and then

leave it to do its own thing? Every valuable piece of content needs a

supporting sales campaign. Publish a video first, then promote it with

articles, blogs, free stuff, competitions, forum and blog comments, updates, shares and social bookmarking. The

first rule of content marketing is support, support, support!

Use social marketing, SEO and content marketing to create a powerhouse

online marketing campaign this year. Be smart about your efforts, and you

will take your business to a whole new level on the internet!

Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) is the creation of John Paul Souza, a serial entrepreneur who's held senior managerial positions at Banc America Capital Management

Group and JP Morgan Chase. Serving marketing professionals,

entrepreneurs and corporations, SMMU differentiates itself by offering

hands-on training from hands-on experts who are actively applying their

skills on real-world projects.

SMMU was recently honored as one of the top 5 finalists by the leading blog

site, Mashable, as one of the top provider of social media services for businesses. The firm has earned the title of "most trusted social media

firm" with over 900 unsolicited testimonials.

For more information about social media webinars and social media

online courses, please visit http://www.socialmediamarketinguniversity.com