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If you're an internet marketer or publisher, chances are you're well aware of the effectiveness of social media optimization (SMO). In case you are new to the concept of Internet marketing, you will end up interested to learn that this breakthrough technique is a really inexpensive (practically free) way to create buzz regarding your products, get more traffic to your site, build trust regarding your company, and improve your sales.

Today, I will demonstrate an easy way to get started in social media - and a simple three-step process will measure just how it's working.

In a nutshell, social media marketing is surely an interactive platform where people can correspond - via boards, forums, advertising boards, networks (as in MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, LinkedIn, Bebo), user-generated content sharing (such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit), wikis (interactive online encyclopedias), and blogs - with well matched those who share similar interests, whatever those interests could be.

Cutting-edge businesses and marketing-centric companies have jumped around the social networking bandwagon to leverage the improved interest in this phenomenon. Companies large and small got their marketers to make MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn profiles to be able to get their fingers about the pulse with the market, correspond with consumers, and make buzz about their products.

My business may be on the net for some time now, dabbling in most sorts of social networking activities with content syndication, viral marketing, an internet-based PR efforts.

Measurements of Length - Recently, we started leveraging a good our individual downline on LinkedIn. Discover knowledgeable about this site, it's really a network community for business people. Users can set up profiles highlighting their corporate experience and areas of expertise.

Our search engine marketing tactics specialists answers select questions about LinkedIn that are linked to his specialty. He also uploads blog articles about a number of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing tactics (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC), and social media practices. It will help create buzz about we (through this person's profile and position at our company). Plus, he sometimes supplements his posts with links back to relevant articles on our website - which assists drive traffic to our website site.

It is a practice it is possible to emulate easily. Simply register as a member of among the social media marketing groups. Then start to participate in the discussions. As an example, if a LinkedIn member posts a particular question about SEO, our SEO specialist will attempt to locate a write-up on our website that addresses that issue. Then he answers the question in the own words, but recommends the member also browse the article, which includes worth more information. By answering questions resulting from your fellow members (ensuring you set relevant links to content in your website), your site content will quickly generate "free" traffic.

Another site that works well for people is StumbleUpon.com. This site directs Online surfers to Webpages based on the surfer's pre-selected categories when they click on the "Stumble" icon on their own toolbar.

It is possible to install the StumbleUpon toolbar by yourself computer and recommend articles on your own site. This enables you to give any page a "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" rating. Additionally, it enables you to add a description and category to your submission. If you rate your article, it'll can be found in the StumbleUpon rotation - which, again, means 'free' traffic to your website.

Starting out is super-easy. The answer to earning social networking do the job is similar with any marketing medium: You need to have a means to determine whether it's working.

Although some marketers have been going all the way with their social networking efforts, most haven't an idea concerning how you can actually measure the campaign's success or failure.

Measurements of Length - Let's say my business just published articles on goal setting for 2009. The content is then a connected product ad in our daily eletter, in addition to with a separate e-mail promotion for a related goal setting techniques product, like our Total Success Achievement program. Product sales are generated from the e-mail and from the ad. Meanwhile, the social networking aspect gets control of.

This article content is syndicated via RSS feeds, as well as top article submission sites (like EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, Buzzle, yet others) and user-generated content networks (for example Digg and Reddit). Readers could also discuss the content on goal setting and self-improvement blogs, forums, and advertising boards.

Now how would you appraise the social media marketing aspect of such an effort?

It is easy. By using the same metrics which are accustomed to measure a public relations effort: Outputs, outcomes, and objectives - what I prefer to call the "3 O's."

1. Outputs (measures effectiveness and efficiency)

For the example, I'd look at Google Analytics for spikes in visitors to our homepage in the days pursuing the article's publication. I'd look specifically at traffic sources, visits, unique visits, and visit percentages. I'd also examine referring sites and appearance engines to determine whether the readers are coming directly from social media marketing platforms. And I'd search for an increase in new subscriber sign-ups (leads) during that same time period.

2. Outcomes (measures behavioral changes)

Because of this metric, I'd take a look at feedback from our customers... e-mails, telephone calls, comments posted on our member forum. I'd also perform some reputation monitoring by searching the Web for keywords like my company's name, this article title, as well as the product name to see if others were referring to it in chat rooms, external forums, and bulltinboards.

3. Objectives (measures business objectives/sales)

Measurement Wiki - The obvious and proportional metric is direct sales with the product which are linked with the editorial. Orders generated from an e-mail link or ad link are coded for tracking, so attributing sales to people sources is definitive. In the event the sales originate from a product page on our website the location where the true "source" can't be tracked, I'd go through the sales during the corresponding dates with the campaign for correlations.

Finally, for each and every of the above, I would compare the existing campaign data in comparison to the year-to-date (YTD) average and year-over-year data to obviously illustrate pre- and post- campaign performance. In other words, I'd take a look at site traffic, unique visits, specific revenue, etc. - all for the same periods of time. Like that, I'd come with an established benchmark by which to determine our current social networking efforts.