Archive for September, 2009

Social Media Marketing is a new concept for most companies and has recently boomed in terms of the buzz associated around the phrase; but social media has actually been around for quite a few years. In fact I remember about ten years ago when girls in my high school were getting in trouble for the comments they posted in their ‘blog’. And five years ago when I was using Facebook groups to win campaigns in college and meet new friends.

I love to hear clients say to me, did you know you can create a Facebook group and send out multiple messages at one time? I really do love hearing this! My response usually is, yes that is how I won a campaign on campus, back in ‘06. Seriously, it is! That was one of my campaign strategies. If I have enough friends on Facebook, and invite enough of them to join my group and then blast them with messages, we will have a competitive advantage over our competition because we will have a much further reach. I literally had my group of friends sit and target our market (students on our FAU campus), and then add them as their friends before voting started. Then when it was time to vote, we blasted this new group of friends with the link to voting and won by a landslide!

Now, Facebook has replaced groups with pages to make them more ‘business friendly’, but it is the same idea as with a group. And with the popularity of Twitter, now you can link them all into one and you are creating your own space… No real need for MySpace anymore, when you can create your own.

Then there is the transformation of blogging, boy has that come a long way! It used to be a thing for high school students to journal their thoughts and opinions about the other kids at school, which would usually lead to some big blow out on campus; but now blogging is being used to give company reviews (very powerful), it’s being used to discuss our likes and dislikes in the world and with products and can, if done properly be used to research on behalf of companies.

If you want to know what your clients think, start a blog. If you want to communicate with your clients/prospects on a personal level, start a blog. In fact, if you want to reach your clients, start a blog. There are some guidelines you should stick to when partaking in business blogging, like not being “sales-y” and being careful of the posted content; but a blog can really increase the awareness of your company while also allowing your target market to communicate back with their thoughts, opinions and feelings of your product.

Business blogging is very important for todays marketing world. Companies across the globe are experiencing the pressure to include their company on the Web. Businesses are overwhlemed with the buzz around social media marketing and how confusing it can be if one doesn’t know anything about it.

The fact of the matter is, social media marketing is confusing, but even more than that it is time consuming; and lets face it who has the time to sit around surfing the internet all day looking for friends on Facebook, updating tweets on Twitter and staying up to date with LinkedIn?

NO~ONE!!! RIGHT? I mean and still run a business to operate the way it should? Who really has the time to do Marketing in general? Marketing is a confusing subject within itself, that is why colleges have a whole major for it. The art of Marketing is taking the time to research, research, research. After you research all about the consumer and their wants and needs, you then have to develop a strategy that works based on the target market you are trying to reach.

For all of you who thought marketing was simple, think again. My dad once said to me… “Bet you can’t wait to be finished with your degree in Marketing, so you can start coming up with creative advertising pieces huh?”   I had to break it down to him, Dad, Marketing isn’t really creating fun advertising pieces that is Advertising! Marketing is all the work that is done behind the scenes to allow those creative people to take over and come up with a fun advertising piece based on the research that went into to finding out what people were looking for.

Internet Marketing is the same way. Companies expect to fill out a few profiles and put a website page up then sit back relax and watch the business come in. That is not the case, now more than ever before businesses have to take an extra step to find their customers and interest them in their products. Companies must inform, educate and entertain internet users through content, pictures and videos.

No longer does a static website work for consumers, they now want a website and more to view before they make a choice on what company they choose to work with. They want to read reviews, be allowed to ask questions and post comments. This interaction is what makes consumers in this era happy.