I want to do somewhat of a follow up to a post I did a while ago discounting Social Media Optimization.  I still feel the same way about not buying into the term, and I still feel its another form of Search Engine Optimization, BUT I am now embracing the term Social Media Marketing in regards to SMO - so from now on all my posts that relate to what has been dubbed Social Media Optimization will now be in my Social Media Marketing category.

I have been doing a ton of Social Media Marketing lately for myself and clients, and have realized the power of the community of people that use them.  I get roughly 75% of my traffic from social sites, community networks, blogs and other non-search engine sites.  I realized when I started seeing a shift in the stats that Social Media Marketing is truly different from SEO, and in my opinion so much more powerful and targeted. 

You have the ability to get the most relevent information right into the hands of those looking for it.  You are not shoving it down thier face.  When doing Social Media Marketing on all my sites and clients sites I have no interest in what the search engines will be doing with the information that I am giving.  Although, there still is some SEO benefits to Social Media Marketing such as:

• Back Links
• Additional Rankings
• Multiple Rankings
• Rankings in some cases you normally would not have
• Reverse SEO strategies (if needed)
• Rankings for “reputation managment”

Here is my list of top Social Media Marketing sites any internet marketer needs to be taking advantage of:

• Del.icio.us
• Reddit
• Digg (If your stories are worthy of it, its ok to digg them yourself, but don’t abuse)
• Flickr (photos, but still can help you get great traffic)
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Feedburner (if you are new to Social Media Marketing this site alone will give you a good start!)
• LinkedIn
• ZoomInfo
• Wikipedia
• NewsVine
• Furl
• Yahoo! 360
• Bloglines
• BlinkList
• Squidoo
• MySpace
• Yahoo! Answers

These are a few of the ones I use, and I am sure that I am not taking full advantage of all of them even at this point so I would love to hear some success stories others have had with these Social Media Marketing sites.  Also I would love to hear any insights of things that you have done that have worked well when it comes to SMM.  Again, this puts the final stamp on my feelings of SMO and will no longer be referring to it as such - from now on its all Social Media Marketing!

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