Social Media

[fredkawig]

I've never actually used Reddit. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube on the other hand can be very handy when used optimally. I agree, social media sites are a very good way to advertise, market your products, search for customers and to make your business known. Many businessmen have totally ignored the profit realization techniques that can be used by using social networking sites. Some businessmen/women due to age, do not utilize technology and social media as a way to increase their profits. But there are those who are very much skilled and flexible to the way they handle their business and makes use of everything they can to increase their profits including the use of social networking sites.

[True Self Organics]

I believe social media such as Facebook is definitely on the decline. It does not mean it's already dead. There were way too many people signed up, so it will take a long time before it become less than popular. Although I have to point out that Facebook did something incredibly bad for business. Sometimes during the second half (probably in the summer) of 2012, Facebook suddenly decided to add the paid promotion button to Facebook fan pages. Of course nobody was going to use it, since the fans will see the fan page posts anyway. So Facebook decided it's a good idea for them to kill the natural exposure of the fan page wall posts. Nowadays, you'd be luck to get even 1% of your fans to see your wall updates. If you want more of them to see your updates, you have to pay for each and every posts. This move effectively killed off the usefulness of Facebook fan page for small businesses.

However, even with Facebook fan page has become useless. You can still run Facebook ad campaign to promote whatever you wish to promote.

On a side note, since Facebook is so popular, many other social media networks give the option to connect with Facebook. So even though you can't get to your Facebook fans with your updates, every time you post something on your fan page, it will also be posted to all the connected accounts on other social media. My Facebook is connected with my Twitter by the way. I also use Reddit, Digg, Linkedin, Delicious, Stumbleupon.

Social Media is definitely a blessing for those small businesses that if done right, get free advertising. Facebook has been on the decline for the past year. Less and less people think "its cool". Instagram is the next new now. People are visual beings. They relate to pictures faster than they relate to words. If you can capture your products in a cool, serene way people will want to check out what you're doing. I haven't tried Reddit yet. What's that all about?

[cpefley]

You bring up a great point. Facebook is definitely fading, as other social media empires are growing. Even Instagram is a great place for promoting, however, Reddit has a huge and diverse audience that is growing everyday. For younger people, Tumblr. is also a growing interest. There are really so many forms of free advertising out there, because social media makes it easy to connect with a huge audience, if you can captivate them. Attention spans are short and time is limited, however, so it does become a challenge to create unique posts that will get their attention quickly.

[theshaynee]

This is very true and a very good analysis. The highest ranking social media is the one were you can interact with your customers and that has a large visibility.
For example: Facebook has limited visibility and the interaction is minimal (everything is in one big comment stream, not really personal, no ranking of comments, ...).
Reddit on the other hand can be very personal and has great visibility if you target your post well.

Also, if you post something on Facebook on the wrong time of day, it's possible none of your customers will ever see it.

I've noticed this and it's beyond frustrating. With enough followers/likes/friends you would think that posting on your business page or personal page would bring plenty of traffic and high visibility. But it's not necessarily the case.
I can post a dozen things a day and get a decent amount of views. But if I didn't do that it wouldn't be seen at all.
Reddit makes things a lot more interactive. If I have good content, I'll get the views and upvotes. It's that simple.

[Yamabushi]

Reddit is indeed one of the best ways to drive traffic. I just linked an article on reddit and it got close to 40,000 hits within 12 hours and was on the first page of its subreddit. If you have a topic that hasn't been heard about before, or something dramatic with controversy involved, reddit will blow you away with traffic.

It's also a great way to get a few extra hits on generic articles and content. But be careful! Unless the subreddit is very active, you don't want to be putting too many links in.

[theshaynee]

Reddit is indeed one of the best ways to drive traffic. I just linked an article on reddit and it got close to 40,000 hits within 12 hours and was on the first page of its subreddit. If you have a topic that hasn't been heard about before, or something dramatic with controversy involved, reddit will blow you away with traffic.

It's also a great way to get a few extra hits on generic articles and content. But be careful! Unless the subreddit is very active, you don't want to be putting too many links in.

Very true.
There's a good bit of traffic in those subreddits if you get the right ones.
Congrats on hitting the front page!

[jamesmorrison926]

I am a regular user of Reddit, Fb, Twitter, LinkedIn and Stumble upon in the social media market. The highest ranking social media is the one were you can interact with your customers and that has a large visibility. Facebook is used as a marketing tool but i think it will be better if it is used just as a sharing information platform rather than a social marketing tool. Twitter is built for the Business & the commercial purpose in the media marketing. But Reddit & Stumble upon emerges as both the social as well as the commercial tools for social media marketing.

[earlmorrison]

Aside from those building a page on Foursquare and putting the business on yelp is a great idea too.

[oregano]

Thanks for your tips re. Reddit and getting banned (but not informed!) if you ask people for votes, P&T Consulting. This just goes to show that you really need to know the rules and quirks of each of the social media sites you're using! I find that many of the social media sites (Facebook is a good example) change their rules and layouts so often that it can be hard to keep up. Just when I've figured out how to do something on one of these sites, everything changes and it's either no longer allowed or you have to go somewhere completely different on the page to do it!

[Grumpster]

Facebook & Twitter are some great methods of social media promotion but of course as others have stated, there are so many rules & regulations that you have to follow when promoting your own websites that you just will naturally find it hard to keep up at some stages. There are also the slightly less well-known networks like Tumblr and Reddit that allow promotion, but again have very strict rules, however, if you promote in the correct ways, follow the rules and make your advertisements look very appealing, you'll most certainly have a massive amount of success with promoting your websites with each and every social network that you use.