Social Media Marketing

You’ve probably heard a lot of talk about “social media marketing” or “Web 2.0 marketing” and wondered what all the buzz is about. Businesses large and small are using social media to reach customers and to build reputation. You have the feeling that you need to catch up and understand social media marketing and how you can use it to compete and grow your business, but you have no idea of how to do that. Don’t let this feeling overwhelm you–everyone starts out feeling clueless about social media marketing!

A “social media website” allows people to easily publish their own content to the Web and interact with other people interested in the content published. A social media website’s content is primarily published by users, not employees of the company that owns the website. These websites include Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Meetup.com, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Wikipedia, WordPress, and YouTube.

Social media has changed the way companies talk to their customers. It has also empowered the consumer to talk to a worldwide audience about their experience with a particular company or product. Other consumers watch and study these user-to-user word-of-mouth online conversations to help them with purchasing decisions. People tend to look at the opinions and experiences of other consumers as more trustworthy than advertisements from the company itself.

Companies can use social media to increase brand awareness. Social media makes it easy and cheap for a company to launch a marketing campaign and get direct feedback from their existing customers and the target market at large.

A company blog can be used for customer support and market research; identifying what is working and what is not – according to the customer. Companies can respond directly and publically to customer complaints.

The text, photos, and videos on social media sites are called “user-generated content”. Two examples of user-generated content:
1) A video uploaded to YouTube.com by a YouTube member
2) Comments and ratings on the same video by other YouTube members.

YouTube videos can be designed to show up on page #1 of Google searches on highly competitive keywords. Facebook can be used to build an online community around existing products and brands, whereas Twitter is better suited for time-sensitive promotions.

“Social media marketing” is a term that describes use of social media websites for marketing, public relations, sales, and new product and service launches. Social media technologies are often free or available for low cost and are easily scalable, enabling anyone to reach a global audience.

An example of using social media for marketing:
1) A photography studio owner uploads the studio’s portfolio to photo-sharing website Flickr, with links back to the studio’s website. One of the photos is of the local high school football team during an on field celebration after a win over a long-time rival to whom they had lost for many years. Another photo is a very cute photo of a puppy and kitten playing together.
2) A Digg user bookmarks the puppy and kitten photo. The photo becomes popular on Digg (goes “viral”), receiving “thumbs up” praise from hundreds of Digg users in the form of “diggs”.
3) The photography studio owner “tweets” a link to the football photo on Twitter. The photo is “re-tweeted” over and over, eventually being seen by a couple hundred people in the studio owners local market, resulting in a spike in traffic to his website and a phone call requesting a quote on photography services for an upcoming wedding.
4) An employee of a calendar publishing company that is looking for cute puppy and kitten photos for one of next year’s calendars sees the photography studio’s puppy/kitten photo and contacts the studio owner about licensing the photo.

Online Potential Inc. will show you how to create buzz and sales leads using social media posts that attract attention and become viral. Buzz, inspiring discussion, and creating a “fan base” are what make social media marketing work. We’ll show you how to do it.