Social Media•
on July 6th, 2010•
Is it important that your message is heard? What are you trying to portray?
Social media, a hot topic across virtually every industry this year has merit, value and has brought to light a new form of telling your story. The backbone of social media has existed for some time; with blogging and social networks ranging from the earliest Internet forums to chat protocols such as IRC (Internet Relay Chat). One could say that the first social networks were those held around campfires, talking and telling stories. While this may be true, the digitized aspect of social networking now has changed everything.
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Happy Social Media Day!
Come join us for a short lunch celebrating Social Media Day! Let’s chat about what you are getting out of, and putting in to social media.
Time: 1:00 PM, June 30, 2010
Location: Downtown Dog House, 4 5th St S, Great Falls, MT
Link to more info: Official Great Falls Social Media Day Meetup Page
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When you created your product or service, you likely had a target customer in mind. It could be a broad audience, or highly targeted. Either way, you have a desired set of customers that will purchase and use what you have to offer. Have you clearly relayed to them what value you offer them?
It happens all too often that the perception of a target market may be the opposite of what affect you wished to have on it. With inbound marketing, the driving of traffic and converting it into leads and customers, you have the chance to be concise, clear and effective in your message, while affecting the bottom line, while increasing customer and client satisfaction. This happens with the product or service being found by the right target market and their perception being more qualified, or in line with your desired result. Both sides find success.
There are a few key differentiators from an effective message and an ineffective one:
- Unclear value – Can the reader, viewer, listener understand the core value that your product or service offers?
- Difficult to follow calls to action – Some calls to action are utterly miserable and are difficult to follow for the “end user”
- Boring - Keep it lively. People interact better when the message being relayed to them isn’t dull and stiff, even if the subject is
By combining the natural desire you have to promote your brand in a vein of positive light, be authentic with the message and by using smart inbound marketing techniques your Internet marketing and social media marketing campaigns will have natural success.
(Photo credit: Sameer Vasta)
There I was, peeking around the corner, with a rubber band in hand, to find my friend who had snuck around the other side. I saw him duck and try to hide, no cover was in site so I had a clear shot. I pulled back hard on the rubber band, stretching it to the limit, aiming carefully with my eye, and released! WHACK. I felt a sting. Did he get me with a counter attack? OK now the sting really hurt, in my eye. I had released the rubber band in the wrong direction, towards my eye, point blank. Not the best way to start off a morning rubber band fight.
Online marketing isn’t about shooting rubber bands back and forth at your potential clients and customers. Even if you write a compelling message on the band before whirling it across the room (think global), they are going to shoot it right back at you, empty handed, or worse yet, it might end up in the wrong direction. Think pain in the eye, not fun.
When attending parades as a kid, I always looked forward to being on the receiving end of the candy throwers. You know, the red convertible carrying the mayor, while his assistants would whirl tasty candy in the direction of the excited youth.
I found it even more fulfilling when I was on the candy throwing end a few times. While walking with some non-profits that were getting out the message, we threw out candy with messages attached. You could call this lead generation, and hey the advertising was cheap.
The idea of bounce back marketing isn’t new. Online and digital marketing changed the game years ago, and continues to hype it up. Your best bet is to continue working hard to tell a story your customers will repeat.
(Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)
One of the things I’ve observed in the realm of social media marketing is that many marketing experts debate where you should focus your marketing efforts. This stems from a variety of opinions, experiences, and where their target market’s “hang out”.
Social media marketing puts businesses where consumers hang out. As marketers we love the plethora of information available from status updates, profile information, and other pools of data. Our society has become adept to weeding out the crap, and shoveling in the good, high quality information. Cream rises to the top.
If you look at the following chart comparing traffic metrics of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in the light of sheer volume of people to market to you might right off the bat say, lets jump on Facebook! They have massive amounts of traffic, wahoo!
Now of course there are many other social networks that deserve attention, but for sake of making a point, those three are the ones chosen.
Go where your people are
Taking a holistic approach to Internet marketing and social media marketing is key to success for any business or individual. But taking the time to find out where your target market “hangs out” is critical.
Take a look at the following world map of social networks, courtesy of vincos.it:
You probably see at least some social networks on the map that you’ve never heard of, I know I did. The key is to find out where your market is and to listen, participate and act upon where they are.
The business case and ROI regarding social media has been made time and time over again. Consumers, individuals, businesses, government, and organizations communicate daily using social media and social networking. It is becoming mandatory that customer service monitoring, response and action take place via social media as so many opportunities to build loyalty and solve real problems now exist.
As you whittle together your effort to leverage this communication mechanism for the greater good of your business and customers, it is imperative that you take some time, now, to put together a social media marketing strategy. The following is a guide to get you started on the right path, and give you some food for thought.
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