–Social Media Marketing

A business must utilize a variety of marketing methods in order to be successful. Even the largest of companies have reached beyond the traditional methods, like television, newspaper or radio, and implement forms of Internet marketing. We can help develop a marketing plan the uses traditional methods and use Internet marketing to help your business be successful.

We can take your existing marketing  efforts and add a new level, that level is Web 2.0 and incorporating social media into your marketing mix.

Web 2.0 is defined as the next generation of the internet, it’s the communication, information sharing, user-centered design. It has led to the evolution of web-based communities. For example, social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.; video-sharing sites such as YouTube and blogs, among other things.

The web as we know is actually static. We direct people to our static website to gain more information about our businesses. People don’t want to wait for information, they want information now. We all research businesses online so we’re informed before a purchase. Our customers are doing that as well.

Social Media combines two familiar words:
Social meaning to interact with people.
Media in the traditional sense media would in include newspaper, magazines and television.

We put them together and we get Social Media being activities, practices and behavior among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge and opinions using digital media.

Now you know what Social Media is, the next question is how you can use it. To start off with you need to engage your audience. You will need to make sure the message you are sharing will connect with your customer, prospects, employees or anyone else by utilizing one or more of the following strategies: Communication; Collaboration; Education; and/or Entertainment.
Some example or each are:

Communication: if you have sent an email recently you have done this first step. If you have invited people online to view your newsletter, website or blog you have communicated.

Collaboration: If you have participated in a chat room or discussion board you have used this strategy.A more modern application of this are eBay and Wikipedia. Both allow you to collaborate on any particular item or topic.

Education: Education your customers and training your employees will help make your business successful. Telling you customer what your service or product can do for them is a number one tool for success.

Entertainment: Not long ago the most successful commercials on television were the most entertaining and were quite expensive to produce. Now a quick search on YouTube you can find video produced sharing the same message on just about any topic.This would be the same for print articles, with the help of a search engine you can find information on any topic.

Still thinking about exploring Social Media as a marketing channel for your website or business? You could spend a bundle on link exchanges, search advertising or the purchase of banner and editorial ads on relevant sites and spend hours doing it or give us a call and we can setup a Social Media Marketing plan suited to your needs.