Apr
5
Social Media Marketing is a new opportunity for any size business to promote their product or service online. However, it’s not about selling. It’s about reach their target market by providing useful content that helps that market solve a problem or deliver a solution.
Being social, building relationships, providing value, and making the decision to embrace this new Web 2.0 way of marketing a business online is what we have to master. There is a system that can be utilized to accomplish social media marketing tasks. Business owners shouldn’t be in the dark about WHAT to do.
Here is a Press Release from FastPitch News.
Instead of a business owner ignoring this new way to market and advertise a business, for any number of reasons, a step-by-step guide has been released to facilitate a company’s step into the social media world and provide a general understanding of the rules.
In response to the overwhelming attention that social media and social media marketing is getting, and the confusion that small businesses to large corporations experience about the new social media platform, YourWebSiteMarketingService.com has developed a solution.
First, there are companies who may be too small to hire a new staff member to do the social media work. While it should be part of the advertising and/or marketing budget of a business, some of those budgets are very low in the current challenging economic situation.
Second, there are businesses that have not embraced the internet in terms of marketing or advertising. They may have a website, but they do little if any work to promote it. A website will not get found by the majority of its potential visitors unless it is promoted.
Third, some business owners are afraid of the internet. They do not understand it or are concerned with what will be said about their company. What that group should realize is that the conversation is already taking place whether they choose to participate or not.
Right now there are large corporations employing social media teams. Some are realizing great success and measured return on investment. Others aren’t faring so well. Even with a team in place, it that team is not prepared to effectively use social media, it’s not going to work.
We have seen companies attracting huge followings online, and then completely ignoring the conversation there. Social media is not only for huge brands. Every small business in every small town can utilize social media and social media marketing to grow their business.
Social media and social media marketing can transform a business by creating new relationships, increasing sales, building advocates for the business, and enjoying loyal new customers. The way the business engages in social media will determine the success that results.
After observing the confusion and misuse of social media, as well as the fear of getting started due to the unknown, a Social Media and Social Media Marketing Guide was produced to ease the transformation from marketing of the past (that no longer works) to the new world of advertising and marketing a business on the internet.
Social Media does not have to be complex. It is centered around conversation and promotion of valuable materials shared by the business. It is engaging and even enjoyable. It creates relationship and communication. Social Media is an exciting new way to promote a business and now it has been made easier than ever to begin.
To learn more about or secure a copy of the Social Media and Social Media Marketing Guide, visit Social Media Marketing Guide.
Mar
20
Use Social Media Effectively
Filed Under Home Business | 1 Comment
A business owner can Google ‘How to Use Social Media’ and may be amazed at the number of results that are returned. It will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 278 million web pages that talk about Social Media. How are you not to get confused?
The information you read will inspire you – because Social Media is an exciting new way to market a business. It will enlighten you – because there is a great deal of good information. And it is sure to confuse you – big time. That is because there is so much material and it is not very organized for productivity; in other words it is mostly scattered information that is hard to put into a workable plan for the inexperienced social media marketer.
Social Media is not about posting information – whether it be in the form of written content, audio, or video – and then sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Even if you put a lot of time, effort, and expense in developing the content – it won’t be enough to post it and forget it. Social Media Marketing is an important component. It is the promoting of this great content you are sharing.
Being interactive, encouraging engagement, and helping in the form of giving solutions, solving problems, or answering questions, is what creates the buzz around your company, your product, and your service. This is what social media marketing is all about, and it can be very powerful.
Asking your prospects and customers to participate in the conversation that takes place in your brand’s social media space, and inviting them to contribute to the content you provide, will build interest and have people talking about you. Being active yourself in responding to what is being said, and also seeking out ways you can help, will make a difference.
Part of social media marketing is searching for conversations and then participating in a helpful way, not a ’selling’ way. This builds a reputation of integrity and value. The key to social media is the spread of your information, by the people who like it enough to want to share it with someone. This is how word is spread online in social networking sites. It is important because, now more than ever before, people like to buy from people they know, like, and trust.
Social media has opened up a whole new world to the consumer. They can talk directly with the brand now. They feel more important to the brand and they want more information than ever before, including personal referrals for the brand. So they want to hear what others have to say, and the way a brand makes a positive impact on the people that will refer them is to engage with them online. The opportunity to develop content, for little or no cost, that is delivered very publicly on the internet is quite beneficial to the company if done with the primary benefit of the consumer in mind.
Investment in social media is more in terms of time than money. There is money to be spent in online advertising for sure, but right now many social sites have little or no cost. The investment is more in terms of time for the business owner who is tackling the project alone, and money if you have to outsource the work that is time consuming. Some brands choose to invest in a social media plan and have a current employee do the work. Others with a larger budget may hire a social media consultant or outsource the work to a reputable service.
The takeaway is that Social Media is not only about Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or any of the social websites, even though they are part of the story. It is about providing content that will attract and benefit people, and then the engaging you do with people to build loyalty and trust. A business should realize that authenticity is important because what you say as you represent your brand is turning out to be much more important than how polished and attractive your content looks. Providing value is what will benefit your business because this creates the buzz around your company that people want to pass along.
Feb
26
Social Media PAYOFF or ROI
Filed Under Home Business | Leave a Comment
This is the 3rd part of a 4 part series on Social Media (links provided in case you have missed the first two): WHAT, WHY, PAYOFF, and (coming next) HOW.
Social Media Payoff (ROI) is tough to measure, and some will say you can’t calculate it yet. It is too soon because Social Media Marketing is so new. That being said, there are definite payoffs being enjoyed by businesses of all sizes and in all markets.
We will list some specific companies and numbers below, but first let’s discuss a very important consideration that will affect ROI outcome. There are many ways to implement social media marketing and some may have little or no return on investment. Participating in social media in ways that are effective involve two major components: engagement in the form of conversation (not selling), and active involvement (not a once and forget method of marketing). Companies that utilize social media in the same way that the people they want to target WANT TO BE SOCIAL, will enjoy the most success in terms of ultimately growing brand awareness and ROI online.
While there is still a place for search engine optimization (SEO), where a website is optimized to rank high in the search engines, we now have social media marketing, including social sites that are ranking high in the search engines. No longer do we have to pay thousands of dollars to buy backlinks to a business website. Today, we must spend the TIME that is required to participate in social media for the greatest payoff.
The fact that social media marketing does not have a fixed cost is true because each social media project is unique and will require varying amounts of time, tools, services, etc. A social media plan should include comprehensive use of available social media sites and opportunities for engagement, and should be targeted to the industry, product, or service. A generic plan without a focus on the business will not work.
What most people who work in the social media field understand is that trying to put a cost on conversation is hard to do. Also, social media marketing usually does not produce instant results. If this is true, how do we measure success?
One way is to measure the feedback you are getting. Are there positive responses being posted, and is there growth in terms of numbers of people engaging with the company online? If the business is getting active supporters, they will – in time – spread the word.
It is important to understand that social media marketing takes hard work, consistent effort, and engaging in ways that are helpful, entertaining, educational, or enlightening. This is the way you build a group of followers who want to take action by telling their online friends when you announce something of value.
There are tools to use that can help measure ROI in terms of: your reach, traffic to the website, influence in the market, conversions, and
retention. Google analytics is a free service that can track information for any website. There are other free services and many paid services as well. Links to the website can be tracked with backlink tools. The numbers of fans, followers, members, etc. in social sites is readily accessible in each of the individual sites.
Worthy of repeating is the idea that social media marketing is ongoing and requires active participation. People will not stay engaged if there is not regular, new content posted. There are many other websites that will pull for their attention. If you give them a reason to come back, they will not only come back but tell others to do the same.
Some numbers that testify to the ROI businesses can achieve:
BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker.
Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter.
Vaynerchuk (WineLibrary.tv) found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 in Billboard Advertising = 300 new customers, AND $0 with Twitter = 1,800 new customers.
Naked Pizza, all natural Pizzeria in New Orleans, that specializes in healthy pies, set a one day sales record using social media. In fact 68% of their sales came from people “calling in from Twitter.” And 85% of their new customers were from Twitter.
Safeway has 62,615 fans of Facebook.
Intuit introduced “Live Community” into their TurboTax® products 2 years ago. Due in part to the resulting word-of-mouth, they have seen unit sales increase +30% each year and have now integrated “Live Community” into their other products like QuickBooks, Quicken, etc.
Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As a result of retweets, the Atlanta Chapter site received 11,000 visitors in 24 hours as a result of this initiative by ResponseMine Interactive.
Software company Genius.com reports 24% of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities.
Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper. The estimated investment for this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value. Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)
One survey found that 71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It.
The takeaway is that if you work your social media plan with integrity and the commitment to contribute value, on an every-day consistent basis, the same as you would do offline in relationships with prospects – it becomes easy and natural. That is what people are looking for in advertising and marketing – and that is what they will reward by doing business with you and referring you to others as well.
To learn more, visit our social media marketing page.
Feb
7
What is Social Media and Social Media Marketing?
Filed Under Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing | 2 Comments
The more you dig into the Social Media world, the more answers you may get in terms of definition of the term. Collectively, they still add up to the same thing. Social media is conversation that takes place online.
The internet is where people now go to get information on products, services, businesses, locations, directions, etc. The internet is also where people are talking to each other about all of these things.
Social media is the communication between both individuals and groups – in all kinds of ways – all over the world wide web. The social sites that we use to engage in conversations are our marketing tools. Tools will come and go, but this advertising and marketing method is here to stay. Remember that the internet is still very young, and every day new people are getting access.
Social media is an opportunity for people to talk directly with major brands in a way that was never available before. And small businesses can use social media exactly the way much larger businesses are doing – right now there is nothing to hold any business back from participating.
The cost of social media is measured more in terms of time than it is in dollars. In order to effectively join this new way to market a business, and have success with it, there has to be a consistent and sincere effort to engage on the popular social networking sites as well as industry specific locations.
Advertising and marketing is no longer about pushing out a message, in the form of an advertisement, to a general crowd or even a targeted market. People do not want to be ’sold to’ anymore. Prospective buyers want information, referrals, testimonies, and conversation about a brand, service, or products.
Social media is about attracting a crowd, pulling them in to your message, by engaging them in conversation, posting valuable (helpful) content online, entertaining, educating, enlightening their market.
And it’s not only enough to provide this great content. The other part of Social Media is the marketing of the message: Social Media Marketing. Helping the content to be seen to an even wider audience is achieved by consistent efforts to market the messages in strategic (non-selling) ways.
Promoting your business online using online social channels can include answering questions, listening to concerns, establishing relationships, asking for feedback, and building brand awareness. The most effective way to utilize social media marketing is to constantly be in touch with the conversation that is already happening about your brand, and responding to it in a sincere way.
There are multiple returns for social media marketing efforts. In addition to achieving a wider reach for your content that results in more visits to your website, there are search engine optimization benefits. Social media sites are now receiving top search engine listings so that even more people find your business when going to Google and other search engines to find your product or service.
So there is a plan for Social Media and there is a plan for Social Media Marketing. Both plans should be worked on a daily basis. There are optimal ways to do each, and we plan to cover that here on this blog.
Takeaway: Social Media is sharing information online. A business can participate by posting content in all kinds of creative ways to engage new people to the product or service that is represented – not to sell, but to use the social space on the internet to facilitate communication that will lead to sales.
Tomorrow’s topic is WHY Social Media.
Market with Social Media
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