Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
October 26th, 2009
…as the traditional marketing sector has also been affected by this recession. With companies slashing their marketing budgets from traditional means such as Television, radio, newspaper ads, SMM and RM has increased 10 fold due to it’s affordability and outreach.
The gas price inflation which in effect has kick-started this change, encouraged businesses to look for other vehicles or means to “get the word out”. Vehicles or means that were available but low-keyed in existence were: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, blogs, ping, Youtube, Delicious, digg, StumbleUpon, Squidoo and countless others. They were vehicles just waiting to be boarded and boarded they were.
Twitter’s vertical climb was off the charts and couldn’t be harnessed because it was moving so fast. Facebook’s social outreach created such a landing place for personal and businesses pages that it also has morphed into a community which has blown itself off the charts with phenomenal growth. Youtube went from being a fun place to upload personal video’s to a wide open advertising market, with phenomenal growth continuing as it has and is becoming a tool for businesses & marketer’s having a lower price tag than television. (Consisting of someone shooting the video, processing it and uploading to their site, versus full blown production costs.)
Video itself is ubiquitous – existing or being everywhere at the same time…constantly encountered it also has helped change the market field. Businesses are changing their vehicles from traditional means to places like-YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, Metacafe, Blip.tv, which can host or provide links to user friendly self-help video’s, educational video’s, how to video’s and news-feeds.
Networking has become a part of who we are.
Businesses are reaching out to customer loyalty, which in turn creates “word of mouth” marketing in today’s world on an internet level. This is where Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, YouTube and others have become so important to businesses. People are talking in these places, talking to friends, relatives, and certain acquaintances/businesses. If they like your product or service, they will talk about you, to you, to family, to friends, to neighbors and connect with you.
Online ratings and reviews are an amazing tool that affects consumer’s buying decisions, and consumers really are using this information to make those decisions. Online companies have already realized this and business owners are now turning to this phenomenon as consumer’s are wanting to know how good the product is, how many people are liking the product and more. The consumer has become very active in researching product information. Businesses need to understand this.
Studies show that the average person has around 250 friends, acquaintances, business connections, etc. within their network/social life. Things to focus on – building relationships with your customer/client, not buddy buddy, but really listening to what they need, being helpful, finding the best deals and passing that on, being aware of what’s happening in your region. Keeping in contact with your clients, even sending thoughtful cards to them. These things will bring your customer/client back and open the door for “word of mouth” marketing, whether it’s in person, online with Facebook, Twitter or others.
The magic is this: If one customer likes your product/service, then you have the potential of reaching 250 more through that one connection. If you have 10 happy customers then you have the potential to reach 2500 connections, if you have 100 happy customers ….. well, you do the math 
Have you changed your playing field yet? 
If you’ve changed your marketing practices…leave a comment in the comment field below and let us know how it’s helped…
If you NEED HELP to change your marketing practices…fill in the contact form below:
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October 7th, 2009
4 Key Steps to Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing…That’s the BIG buzz word lately. You want to optimize? You want to create a niche market? Are you branded? Have you targeted your audience? All these questions…and your head is spinning…
Where do I start? How do I know what is effective? Who knows how to get there most effectively?
Taking the First Step
Step 1: Research what people are interested in.
Before you develop your product, the best place to start is research…finding out exactly what people are interested in and want. With the available technology, you have unlimited resources to create and market your product to a global community.
Question: What sells today?
Some great ideas that sell are:
So now what?
Ok..so you’ve researched, you have your information, you have a targeted audience…so where do you go from here?
Develop a great web site.
Step 2: Develop your image online
Question: What is a great web site?…what specifics do you need to know to set you apart?
Let’s start with a great web site. A great web site targets your audience, it’s designed to sell your product, it specifically draws the visitor in to become your customer. When you write your site, write specifically towards one person, identifying with that visitor’s need. Whether it’s a solution, or how-to, or a help guide, write explaining why your product is their solution and explain how it can help them by solving their problems. Great web sites are also SEO friendly…like WordPress sites. These are equipped with title tags that can be easily customized for optimum rankings and branding purposes. These along with permalink structure and header strategies are what can make you highly visible in search engine rankings.
Set Yourself Apart
Step 3: Set yourself apart from others.
Question: How can you be set apart from all the others?
That is one of the top questions being asked by businesses. Online businesses are growing by leaps and bounds. To set yourself apart, you need to stay on top of current marketing strategies. Current marketing strategies are focused online making yourself available to the consumer-client 24/7. This creates an attraction along with maintaining your consumer/client relationship as you provide helpful information available at all time. With today’s mobile society (via internet mobile devices) that’s becoming a number 1 priority!
Use Social Media and Relationship Management.
Step 4: Use Social Media Marketing and Relationship Management.
Question: How can we use Social Media Marketing and Relationship Management?
SMM – Social Media Marketing which includes Search Engine Optimization and Relationship Management. It is a know fact that consumers feel a stronger connection and feel better served when they are able to interact with companies.
Interactive Marketing – According to Forrester Research, Interactive Marketing is on the rise…it invites more efficient interactive tools: via search marketing, Display advertising, Email marketing, Social Media and (the new kid on the block) Mobile marketing. It also includes: consumer participation with “value-added benefit”, Service, Focus on meaning and making a positive impact.
Marketing…Internet Marketing, Relationship Marketing, SMM, Interactive Marketing… it all leads to this:
“the process of attracting, maintaining, and enhancing relationships with key individuals over time.”
I conclude with this great conclusion quoted from the University of Florida’s IFAS Extension:
“Relationship marketing is one of the most time-consuming, but most effective strategies for marketing Extension programs. Relationship marketing is a process, not a one-time event; clientele must understand that you are committed long-term and that they can depend on you to provide education.
To be effective, you must establish a relationship with the audience you are targeting by making a connection with them over time. In order to build a relationship, as with any other relationship in life, Extension needs to be constantly in touch with its audiences. By making a connection with diverse audiences, Extension can build strong community networks that promote the programs we market beyond the limited scope of small workshops and community meetings.“
September 24th, 2009
REALTIME Social Media MARKETING
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the future of marketing and advertising in REALTIME.
SMM (Social media marketing) predicted to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums…Social Media Marketing Management integrated with your traditional marketing starts to develop your digital “word-of-mouth” brand awareness (Fans/followers spread your message). Informs in realtime, with relevant up-to-date information. This creates realtime web presence when partnered with Social Media Marketing.
- Social Media 101 - Realtime SM Training – basic training course helping employees understand the hows, whys and where to engage in socialmedia…Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
- Social Media Train-the-Trainer 201 – course introduces more complete tools and helpful tips to help ‘Make Conversations’, ‘How to Listen’, authorized to train fellow employee’s along with strategy building from the ground up…how to design your social media campaigns, action plans and organizing your time effectively in SM.
- SMM Management - set objectives, updates, targeting audiences, polls, event promotions
- Basic SEO - optimize and site reevaluation, rewebbing.
- Branding Monitoring - market research, what works-what doesn’t,
- Mobile Marketing - mobile twitter updates, facebook updates, mobile marketing strategies
SMM Training – Seminar’s: Provides Realtime training by Targeting Online Searching, Marketing information, Problem-solving and getting results.
Contact for pricing based on needs -
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September 22nd, 2009
Recapping what Social Media is and what SEO does to help businesses.
As Social Media embraces a wide variety of formats, each format provides users with a personal preference appeal means to interact and share information.
- Breaking News: Places like Twitter, FaceBook and blogs give ordinary people the ability to share news and events before the news media even gets there. Items like iphones and blackberries, laptops, along with these sites have increased the news sharing so much that online news or traditional news has almost become snail paced.
- Information Distribution Center: Depending on the format, Social media allows one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many communications. Information can be distributed in multiple fashion, including Twitter updates, RSS feeds, blogs and podcasts, postings on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Ning and YouTube.
- Building online communities around people, events and brands: Using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace along with blogs, enables people to gather and participate with like-minded people.
- Consumer input: Enables user contribution serving as information filters by content sharing and ratings, using the strength of comments and submissions on Twitter, blogs and video sites, also known as wisdom of the crowds.
Social Media has forever changed the traditional content marketplace making it readily available in a large variety of formats. This way the individual or business can mold it into whatever their needs are, making this a very appealing change where companies are in charge of their own personalized media content.
So how does this tie in with SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization brings you to higher rankings in your Search engines like Google, Yahoo, ect. As more and more businesses are launching web sites, blogs and venturing in the online arena, page rankings have become increasingly important. How to get higher page rankings? Have a clear and precise strategy using SEO and Social Media. Why do I need both? Because you can’t succeed at one without the other.
If you venture the SEO path, great…so now your optimized and everything is in place. So how do people find out about you? Answer: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, these are just a few examples of important avenues to use in Social Media. One Tweet on Twitter can drive up your traffic. As YouTube and Facebook have become daily routine for most people, an informational video clip of 2 min or less can broaden your traffic, along with increasing your page rankings. So can a Facebook page or blog, inviting discussions, comments, and reviews/share your story places. People are looking for quality, caring and real places.
A great “quick to the point” read would be Ian Lurie’s article about You can’t Separate Social Media and SEO.
I also really like how Lee Odden states in his blog-”if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it?” His Social Media Readiness: 6 Questions is also a great information site and a must read.
Are your Social Media Strategies compounding results?
August 13th, 2009
With power shifts continuing…marketing is morphing itself into a world that influences your brand, your product and your services.
Consumers have grabbed ahold of Social networks in such a frenzy that those networks have skyrocketed in growth five-fold. Building Social Strategies is vital to businesses surviving in this crucial time. To be successful, marketers must use a strategic, systematic approach in setting up this process.
*Listed below are seven practical ways to be efficient in this strategy.
- Socialize content.
- Word of mouth with Twitter
- Aggregate existing content.
- Crowdsource your support.
- Sponsor bloggers.
- Sponsor events.
- Let go with APIs.
*Additional things to do:
- Manage social media for the long term.
- Start small but plan for the long term.
- Accurately prove effectiveness through social application metrics.
- Measure based on objective
- Develop the right roles.
- Social media strategist and community manager
- Educate through social media supplements. Like Procter & Gamble’s social media lab
*Courtesy of Forrester’s Research.
July 22nd, 2009
Forbes has an informative article written about this..speaking about “Recessions offer what may be unprecedented opportunities to market in and environment of relatively less noise, as others cut back.” They also warned that ad agencies would pressure clients to increase their budgets in the face of a downturn. Basically speaking, if clients don’t spend, agencies don’t have business. It’s definitely a good read…giving you some great pointers on where to increase and where to decrease.
Forrester’s Research, talks about:
Three important steps to Recession Marketing.
- What consumers want from brands
- Prioritizing your marketing spend
- Engaging today’s consumer online and offline
Peer opinions carry considerable weight, examples are as follows:
- Valued opinion of a friend who has used product.
- Reviews-consumer reviews are highly valued on whether to buy or use service. Many sites offer this consumer review/poll.
- Online reviews by editors of a content site. Gives a footing to online sales.
Consumers are showing they want more control…by not trusting popup ads, rather trusting emails they have signed up for. If you’ve been using those pesky popups…now is a good time to get rid of them! Other trusted agenda’s are Brand Web sites, In-store ads, Consumer opinions posted online.
With personal optimism declining, recession has been moving people toward comfort and connection showing that consumers are shopping less and researching more. With the consumer expecting to have less to spend, marketers also have less to spend, meaning brand loyalty has become more important than ever. Marketers must be able to provide comfort and reassurance while doing more to meet the consumers’ unique needs.
Digital marketing is seeing a lot more increase than offline marketing. Places like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Web Site development and Blogs have increased rapidly while the high cost traditional methods of marketing such as radio and television have dwindled down to a crawl.
“Given your decreased budget, how is your spending affected in each of the following areas?”
Base: 45 marketing leadership CMOs who have had their 2009 marketing budget reduced
Lisa Bradner a Principle Analyst at Forrester Research showed statistics representing that 72% of consumers say prior experience drives their brand loyalty, along with 58% of online adults say they trust online reviews more than any other medium except emails from friends. Those are pretty big numbers. She also found that in a recession many marketers are leaning toward digital as opposed to traditional.
With budgets being tighter than ever, it has driven the need for tough choices and prioritization. On that note…Smart marketers will take that leap not only to acquire new customers/clients, but to also enhance the brand experience with the old ones as well.
July 12th, 2009
I ran across this article the other day Twitter as a Leadership Tool….and while reading it…thought…WOW! So true! Then the idea’s started running through my head.
Most people are not understanding what Twitter actually does. They look at Twitter as just another “something to do” stating they have enough to do already. I’ve experienced that numerous times. I had an IT guy tell me the same thing…”Twitter, is just another thing to do….and keep up with.” What they are missing is this:
Twitter is an opportunity to give to others and make an impact, leading in a way that wasn’t possible till now.
Leading is influence, which really is not anything else but teaching. Twitter provides that vehicle in an extended way. So what is Leadership? Looking up Leadership…I ran across a lot of definitions…most of them relating to influence.
Wikipedia’s definition-
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”.[1]
The Art & Science of Leadership
The process of influencing people while operating to meet organizational requirements and improving the organization through change.
Dictionary.com–verb (used with object)
- to go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort: to lead a group on a cross-country hike.
- to influence or induce; cause: Subsequent events led him to reconsider his position.
- to guide in direction, course, action, opinion, etc.; bring: You can lead her around to your point of view if you are persistent.
Influencing people also means communicating with them. Twitter can be a mega phone to communicate with large groups at once, like texting one text message to however many followers you have. Imagine that…only one tweet can reach thousands at once - simultaneously.
Twitter is another tool for leaders, enabling Leaders to step out further in ways never thought of before. See additional comment from leaders on Leadership and Tweeting.
Want more info on Leadership? Visit Minding the Gaps by Thomas J. Lee. His comment about Twitter and Leadership?
Leadership is indeed about more than position, status, or title. But it has to be about more than influence, too. Influence alone presupposes that leaders have all the answers. So leadership has to reach for real inspiration, for the excited and collaborative involvement of followers. Twitter can help on this, too, by both implicitly and explicitly encouraging people to be more of what they can be.
What is your focus for tweeting?
June 18th, 2009
What is LinkedIn and why should I connect with people on there?
Most people are not understanding the value of creating and up-keeping their profile on LinkedIn. Here’s a few reason’s and pointers to do so.
- First and foremost…you increase your visibility. By setting up your profile, searching for people you know, joining groups your interested in, starting discussions…your increasing your online visibility and creating connections.
- Boost your business…So you have a small business, you want to expand your customer base-generating more business. LinkedIn can help you connect with others that are looking for your product or service. Cost? Free.
- Get Advice…By joining groups, you can not only network with like minded people, you can join discussion, start discussions, ask advice about a product or give advice about a product. Again the cost is free.
- Look for a job…tired of job boards? CraigsList? trade publications? networking with just a few people? LinkedIn has over thirty-five million members. Just think how creating a LinkedIn profile can network you with even 10% of that number!
- Solidify your online Brand Identity…LinkedIn can help you improve your visibility with Google Page Ranking, enhance your search engine results, check and compare other brands rankings and help you create a niche market. All this can be done FREE!
June 10th, 2009
To dive into this further, go ahead and Google Social Media….Reading up on Social Media has been and will be an endless task due to the fact that Social Media continues to evolve even as we speak. While traditionally the Internet/Web catalogs what we have learned and carries an enormous amount of information; Blogs, Twitter, Facebook track “what’s on our minds”. Why does this matter? I’m a large corporation, what does this have to do with me?
As a business, think of getting an up-to-the-minute read on what the world is thinking. How can that help you? Studios have already started using blogs helping give insight of which movies are creating a buzz. Advertisers have also learned that they can track responses to their advertising campaigns. “I’m amazed people don’t get it yet,” says Jeff Weiner, Yahoo’s senior vice-president who heads up search. “Never in the history of market research has there been a tool like this.”
Top 100 Social Media Tools.
Social Media has also been creating new jobs in various marketplaces…visit Mashable’s site for more details.
June 7th, 2009
Today’s world of business revolves around engaging customers & clients with a virtual internet world.
What is a virtual business world? Wikipedia’s definition is: A virtual business (or Internet business), is a business which operates without a corresponding physical identity and transacts entirely via the Internet. Amazon.com is a great example of this…So is Ebay. An internet place connecting buyers and sellers with a product.
But I have a real building..how will this help me? Lately, professional services such as administration, design, and marketing services have risen in popularity with online delivery. Some examples of that include offerings to include services where the person providing the service works out of his or her own office providing services via the Internet or other technology solutions such as a Virtual Assistant.
PRlog explains it this way…
“An online business is quickly becoming one of the most successful ways to reach customers worldwide and rise above the current economic situation – but it works for some, and it doesn’t work for others. If you want to be in the “works for” category, approach your online business with a good vision and careful planning. Then get the help you need to handle the things that you’re not comfortable doing yourself.”
Why is it so important to engage in Social Media and online marketing? Due to search engines optimization and expanding your borders, both are critical in today’s business economy. You can find out what your customer is interested in or needing before they even walk out of their front door using: Facebook so they can become a part of your group and hear what newest product you have, have your own blog site so customers/clients can comment about likes and dislikes on your site. Tweet about what your doing, or adding as a product/service, Post your brand on LinkedIn so anyone can view what you are about, bonus with LinkedIn is that you can also join groups with other like minded professionals and have discussions/support that would benefit you and your business creating virtual support and counsel. 
