By making use of simple tools such as email marketing, updating social networks and keeping your clients informed through your web site you can effectively increase your social public relations across your client or customer portfolio. I would even go as far as to say that short message services (SMS) is a form of Social Public Relations.

People realise the power and potential of capturing the very core and essence of the client or customers attention on an individual basis and using that to push them forward into a making a decision about a product or keeping them informed in a manner that is delightful to them.

Being able to address problems that clients have online through a website that is designed to handle these requests, complaints etc. can provide you with more content for your website. It will enable your customers and or clients to search through these questions and hopefully find an answer. If they can not then all then have to do is leave a message and you can address this online with no hassle.

If it becomes apparent that you need to verbally contact the client or customer then you should go ahead but most of the time you will find that you can properly address issues swiftly and precisely.

The practise of responding online to issues will eventually increase your search engine visibility, your social media presence and will ultimately establish you as an authority in your industry which is good news for any company, big or small and this will certainly bring in plenty more business for you and your clients/customers will be satisfied that they have spent their money on a service or product that can be trusted.

Social Public Relations (Social PR) is the practice of writing press pieces styled specifically to be read and responded to on the internet. Typically, Social Public Relations pieces will tie in social media forums such as YouTube, MySpace, BonoVox PR, and social bookmarks such as Technorati, Digg and Reddit, in an effort to foster social interaction. What makes Social PR unique is that the interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understanding of the topic.

Social PR is a form of Social Media Marketing (SMM), which uses the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social PR may be distributed across Internet forums, message boards, weblogs and wikis to help convey the story or message. Herein lays the distinction between Social PR and traditional press. Social PR is fundamentally different from traditional PR found in media such as newspapers, television and radio, because Social PR relies on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words builds shared-meaning among the community.

Successful Social PR campaigns start with content that is remarkable, unique, and newsworthy. This content can then be marketed by popularizing it or even by creating a “viral campaign,” such as a video on YouTube. Social PR is about being social so this “off-page” work can include getting involved in other similar blogs, forums, and niche communities. Search Engine Marketing or SEM involves utilization of all available Social Networking platforms to brand a product using Search Engine Optimization or SEO techniques of communication, to the end consumer.

Finally, in the context of Internet marketing, Social PR allows a person or company to be strategically placed on the web. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of trying to get one’s content more widely distributed across multiple social media networks. Both SEO and SMO, refer to “on-page” tactics through which a webmaster can use to improve a website for the age of social media. Such optimization includes adding links to services such as Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily ‘saved and submitted’ to and for these services.

Many small businesses do not realise the importance of outsourcing their social media marketing needs and as a result they do not yield any results and are conflicted as to whether or not social media marketing would actually work.

It makes life so much easier when you know exactly what social media marketing entails and how you can make use of the information that you need in order to gain the success that you crave for.

Social media marketing entails that you are always conversing with your clients in a more light hearted environment rather than a strict professional manner. Although you would still have to follow the rules and regulations of your company you must also realise that social media marketing as well as social PR is about people. And not just any people but rather the people that are interested in using your services to gain a better return in their owns businesses or if it is for an individual then the customer would expect that you meet their needs and provide them with value for their money and sometimes that might mean exceeding their expectations.

When I start a social media campaign I pay close attention to the needs of individuals over a broad base, meaning that, I would sub-divide all of the client’s needs and analyse what they expect in return. I would then break this up into various groups and use these groups through various social media sites to attract interested users and keep them engaging in targeted discussions.

I would also use online forums on-site and off-site to ensure that the website being marketed is fully search engine optimized for various niche keywords as well as long tail key words.

This will then ensure that there are as many visitors to the main website as there are to the external social sites.

Social sites in question include but are not limited to the following:

• Facebook;
• Digg;
• Stumbleupon;
• Mixx;
• Linkedin;
• Simpy;
• Technorati;
• Blogger;
• Tumblr;
• Diigo;
• Delicious;

And many more

You will find that once you couple these sites with your blogs and forums you will increase the flow of traffic to your websites and create more business for yourself. It helps to maintain a steady state of business growth and sustenance and you can be assured that you will be pleased with the results that social media marketing and Social PR will yield for your business on or offline.