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Social media marketing is potentially an incredibly powerful tool, and something that can be used to turn a small site with no traffic into an overnight sensation if used correctly – particularly when combined with SEO and other online promotion. But that’s not the experience that everyone will have with it, and there’s a good chance that you’ll be reading this and feeling sceptical. If you’ve been tirelessly posting away on social media sites and finding yourself none-the-better-off, then you might understandably start thinking that social media is all just a lot of hype.

The One Thing You Need to do to Make Your Social Media Marketing a Success

The single most important trick for social media marketers is just to get involved and to genuinely use social media rather than just posting on it. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you ever contribute to these sites for a reason other than to promote yourself. If the answer is no, and you’re only ever on these sites when you want to post a link to your latest article, then you can’t be surprised that no-one is paying you attention. Would you pay attention to a poster like that?

And likewise, if you’re someone who joins a forum merely to post a link to their site, then you shouldn’t be surprised if you a) get ignored, and b) probably find the post is deleted and your account is banned.

What’s critical then is that don’t just go to these sites when you want something, but that you actually contribute and that you form relationships. It’s then that you’ll find you start seeing results, not only because people will be interested in what you have to say, but also because most of the networks themselves have ways of rewarding loyal use. When you contribute well on Reddit for instance you increase your ‘karma’ which in turn means your posts are pushed to the top more quickly.

And finally, you’ll find that there’s actually a lot more to be gained from social media too once you start using it properly. You won’t just be able to bring people to your sites, you’ll also start meeting people you can work with, finding sites that want to let you guest post and even get free promotion from your new online friends. The more you put in, the more you will get out.

How to Get Involved

The question then is how do you go about becoming an active member of these communities rather than just a freeloader? And the answer is simply to put in time, and to consider this as one of the main activities in promoting your site – even though what you’re posting is not going to be directly related to your site most of the time. Every morning this could mean checking a few of your accounts and responding to a few questions, and it could mean uploading a new article or picture occasionally too. It might feel frivolous, but like seo services the ROI should speak for itself.

Brady Fisher is an employee at 7 Strategy, which offers SEO and web design services. He is very passionate about photography and editing.