Twitter has taken micro- blogging to a whole new level. With the limit of typing 140 characters at one time, it facilitates twittering via mobiles. It is an online social networking website which not only helps you stay connected to your friends and family but can be used for subtle online marketing activities. If you are looking for financial advisors for your business, all you need is to tweet and you might find them available inscores…. 

Born in the generation where “small is beautiful”, twittering provides with the opportunity to market without exaggeration.

With media using twittering for posting breaking news or celebrities twittering their relationship status, twitter has also become the new hotshot in the Internet marketing arena. It is used by CEOs who find it easy to track the market trends in no time.

Even when there are limitations on using twitter for direct marketing, it can be used subtly to promote your products and services. 

But one should also be cautious about solely depending on twittering as their main marketing strategic activity. This as Doug Champigny, a well-known Internet marketing mentor, speaker, and the author of the book “Advanced Twitter Marketing” said,“Twitter doesn’t belong to you - meaning the owners could at any time shut it down. In almost 13 years online now I’ve seen a number of big sites come and go, and while Twitter seems firmly rooted at the moment, remember that they still haven’t monetized the service. Even with the business brilliance of Biz Stone & crew, and the small staff they’ve stayed to, they do have some good-sized expenditure for hardware, bandwidth, etc. Sooner or later the bills have to be paid, and I for one will feel much more comfortable about Twitter’s future once they have a monetization system set up and working well.”

But for now learn the subtle marketing techniques and twitter about your productsas it is the way to future as it can be seen now…

Although social media marketing or social media optimization are the evolving techniques of online marketing in this globalized world, the time tested SEO techniques are still what will get your website visible the most in the world of Internet. 

Without undermining the value of informal chit chat and social networking as a great fun way of marketing your products and services, the more surer and professional method still remains to be going by the SEO rules. 

According to latest Internet news buzz it is reported that only with proper understanding of the SEO techniques provided by the ruling search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, one can guarantee those top page rankings of all the strategic keywords. It is further said that it is important that everything you type should be optimized even if it’s a part of social networking or blogging. This is to ensure better rankings on search engines and subsequent rise on traffic on your website as you increase your visibility. 

It is also important to avoid being penalized by the search engines owing to unethical SEO practices just as much as it is important to get your site fully optimized. 

Hence it is important that focus should be first on getting the SEO in place before indulging in other techniques such as posting videos, pay-per-click ads, SMM orSMO. This is as the search engine such as Google being the number one, provides with the most guaranteed traffic to your website if you can get into the top page ranks in the search engines for your strategic keywords.

Even with new marketing techniques evolving by the minute while everyone struggling to survive the credit crunch, the time tested SEO techniques when properly implemented by the rules can still guarantee enough business to survive these hard times.

Even before getting into the debate whether it is better to go for the small pay perclick search engines or stick to the market giants such as Google or Overtures,let me just begin with what is the basic concept of pay per click search engines.

Pay-per-click(PPC) search engines are part of marketing strategies which offers options suchas "pay-per-click" to users. An online marketer can place a small ad on the search result page for a few particular keywords in lieu for a particular payment when a visitor actually clicks on the ad. The advantage being no payment will be required for the ad to be put up on that page per se. Hence the advertiser pays only when a visitor clicks on the ad. 

Hence PPC ensures you pay only when you get traffic to your website. Although it has mostly 1 to 2% conversion rate even among the large PPCs, it is worth even if you have one sale a month especially for small businesses.                                                                                                                                                            

There are different players in the market…The giants such as Google and Overtures are dominating the current market of PPC while the small PPC are trying to manage with small businesses.

Although it is a raging debate among the Internet marketers whether the small PPC are ofany worth, it can be only be proven once they stand the test of time. The advantage of the small PPCs is that the bids are lower than what is required to be made in the large PPCs. But then the large PPC are provided with better distribution and far better features. 

It is very easy to even create your own PPC but then most often there are no guarantees of any strategic traffic for an indefinite time. 

While keeping an eye how the small PPCs evolve over time, it will be better to leave the micro managing of the PPC activity on the larger PPCs for now.

With social media networking emerging as a major player in the online marketing strategic arena, it is important  that one knowsexactly what to do while marketing through such practices. The most importantis “active listening”, according to the online marketing experts. “Activelistening” means that even before starting on a full on online marketing program based on SMO or SMM, it is important to know listen what people aresaying about your site. It is important to actively ask relevant questions which would help you in the proper understanding of the market needs and critically evaluate your services while promoting them. Social networking is not only about informal chit-chatting but is soon becoming a social forum where you can get a proper outlook of what are people conversing about and use the information to strategize your marketing programs. 

Hence you get to know what your customers are looking for at the moment… 

This can be best illustrated by an example given by Dave Evans, the author of the book “Social media marketing: an hour a day”, where he says in one of his articles on social grace – “Coca-Cola and Pepsi have both created a viable presence on Facebook, for example, and used this to build a strong fan base to gather information, refine their products and marketing strategies, and other initiatives. Coca-Cola gained favorable press recently for its adoption and support of its Facebook community -- started not by Coke -- but by fans who saw a need early on for it.  Compare this press with the questioning responses as Coke was seen as having "missed" the opportunity to capitalize on the Diet Coke/Mentos videos of a few years back. If nothing else, the social Web will make you smarter. Meanwhile, Pepsi has pushed further into its social efforts, building "The Juice" in support of its healthy-lifestyle Tropicana Trop 50 juice brand. “ 

The above is just an illustration of how the social media along with “active listening” can be usedto understand the need of your customers and build products or services accordingly for smartly earned profits. 

Hence it can be said that social media communication is not only about giving opinions but listening to what other has to say too… 

With recession hitting the world hard, the people of the world turned more global than ever before. With this, came the era of social media where people got into the mode of the most basic instinct – the instinct to communicate.This led to the launch of popular ways of communicating in the internet. This started with launches of social networking sites such as Orkut by Google, where you can get connected to your long lost school friends, college friends and make new friends joining any number of fan clubs.

The online marketers saw this as an excellent opportunity to use it as a ground to promote their services or products. Although most such forums prohibit direct marketing, it always can be used for chit-chatting about your website and subtle promotion of your services. Hence it also gave birth to online gurus teaching you the art of networking your business without making it too obvious. 

But the best part is it is fun to work on these techniques as you get to build a network across the world with immense opportunity to market with innovative ways. You get to communicate with the top CEOs using twitter ( the most popular social networking site in the current market) in the most informal way and get your business moving without too many hassles about formal discussions…. 

The other sites that falls under the popularity charts are Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the most professional site which helps you get connected to your colleagues even afterthey have left for greener pastures. 

But the best way to social network will be blogging. Having your own business blogs gives you the opportunity to have your say the way you want. It is the best way to market your products with any restrictions. A properly optimized regular blog can ensure the proper branding of your website and its services among the strategic visitors on the Internet. 

But before you get started on creating your network, one should have a thorough knowledge about your goals in the networking site and clear profile of your targeted audience. With to the point communication you can have a much better impact than blabbering about unrelated topics.