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Social Media Marketing... hype or hope?

There is a lot of buzz and talk about "Social Media Marketing" (SMM) which in essence is using your social networks like twitter and facebook to market your business or products. The missing part of the description is the "media" bit. This describes the "what are you using to get attention" part. This could be words, images, both or even promotional online videos and we're going to describe how to do it and what works!

Where does your website fit in your plan?

Social Media Marketing is just that, it's marketing, which means it's one small part of a much bigger success strategy. The goal of SMM is to drive either direct contact or interest to your website. The website can do so much more for you than many people realise. Once people land on your site then they are immersed in your brand and your world (unlike facebook). Some of the jobs of your website could include:

• Convincing people to become clients (client conversion)
• Generating loyalty and a "fan base"
• Selling products or even ideas
• Gathering subscribers to your mail list
• Saving you time by answering routine questions (FAQs)
• Getting you discovered in the first place (SEO)

A healthy website depends on the right ingredients

I oculdn't help myself with the food analogy. The latest website we have produced is for a fully qualified and successful nutritionist and they will explain that a healthy strong body comes from having the right stuff in the right quantities in a persons diet. Many websites are unhealthy, fat with content but lacking in focus or goals. Too much of one thing and no consideration of another. Luckily we know what we're doing at Sparticle which is probably just one of the reasons we're doing lots of new websites for small businesses who take their business and money seriously.

Blogging Strategy: To Get traffic from facebook and Twitter etc.

1. You write a briliant blog article on your website using the spartpress plugin.
2. You post a link to your blog article on your facebook/twitter/linkedIn wall.
3. People who know you visit your website, and because they know you they spend more time on your site than visitors from say Google searches.
4. They tell people about you on Facebook and share your link with their friends!

This isn't theoretical. We've been doing this for years and it's brought us clients from all over Europe! and it's really simple!

The SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Benefits of Blogging with Spartpress

Each post is a page in it's own right. And we've done some IT magic in the background to make sure that when you post it is formatted and presented in a great way to get found by search engines. In fact some of our clients who blog regularly report that it drives about 25% more traffic to their site. And here's the cool thing... it's good quality traffic!

So when you visit the nutritional therapists website that we've just done, see how many of the features are designed to help her easily engage in social marketing and to further improve her SEO rankings.

We have been supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses in and around Kent and the UK by helping them establish successful websites and online businesses since 2004. So it's a great endorsement when we get repeat business and referrals from existing clients. So when HWInsync was established their Director (an existing client) contacted us and we worked closely with his new company to quickly get their website and online email marketing up and running and importantly cost effectively too!

They are one of the main retailers of FDA approved pulsed electromagnetic field therapy healing products for humans and horses. It may sound like something from star trek but this technology is real and has been in use for decades. It's finally getting out to a wider market and the guys at HW Insync really know their stuff and so there's lots of videos and images on their sites as well as up to the minute articles and research in their news streams.

The reason they can bring all this information together so easily is because they're using our website plugins which make it really easy for them to manage the content on their websites. Our spartAV gallery allows them to organise images and videos, while our popular spartpress allows them to manage their blogs, news and rss feeds all done online. When it comes to outreach they're using our spartmail.com email marketing tool.

They're a smart and dynamic company with a great product and that's why they value our services and range of products as well as our ability to deliver bespoke web based solutions.