Social Marketing Strategies from Social Marketing Expert Peter Lenkefi

If you haven’t realized the importance of using social media (aka Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon) to generate traffic to your site then you’ve killed a few too many neurons manually submitting your html website to directories.

However, the art of Social Media Marketing is rapidly changing and you can’t follow the rules doled out by the gurus as recently as last month.

The latest heavy-duty social media marketing research from the likes of SEOMoz and eMarketer indicate a hyper-disillusionment rate that occurs with typical, unthoughtful and “unresearched” social media marketing campaigns.

For example, many of you may be busting your humps to gain friends on the behemoth that is MySpace so you can craft and send clever “marketing” bait pieces out to them. What you don’t realize is that 43 other “clever” fools just did the same thing yesterday so MySpacers see your stench from 3 backlinks away.

Or, maybe you have all but spammed your grandmothers Juno.com account trying to get Dugg on Digg. Haven’t you learned yet? Digg readers are the ultimate scanners who don’t actually subscribe to lists and rarely, if ever (there may be one guy) buy anything!!

Yes, effective social media marketing requires a professional approach. You have to do your research and you need to actually think the campaign through. Of course, your approach will evolve according to your results but, for the love of blogs, don’t just spew keywords onto a Wordpress template and think you are harnessing the power of social media.

Here are a few What-Not-To-Do tips to keep you from embarrassing yourself (this is not meant to be an insult, these tips come honestly):

1. Be un-Human! Make the content you add to social media sites meaningful, not long or Hemingway-esque, just meaningful. And, like a good human (or “fun loving biped” as Timothy Ferris puts it), create a profile on your social bookmarking site or your blog that reveals some humanity, and hides your twisted plot to rule the SERPs with cleverly disguised spam.
2. Use The Wrong Tool! You wouldn’t clean a mirror with steel wool, right? Likewise, don’t submit a salesy internet marketing post to a social media site that is geared toward health related topics. Sounds simple and obvious but this is one of the most common bumbles of SMM newbies.
3. Scatter Yourself! Don’t fall in love with Web 2.0 and waste time finding and testing new Web 2.0 sites and services each day, leaving yesterday’s finds to collect digital dust. Pick one or two that you like and LEARN the system…participate, vote, comment, etc. Once you have one service well in hand, move on to the next.

Ah, so simple yet often ignored is this advice. Believe me, this IS what NOT to do!

If the above-mentioned advice still does not make sense, that is OK. It just means you need more social media marketing tips.

Read the Authority Black Book, recently ranked #1 by Mashable.com, to get a better grasp of social media marketing.