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Should You Use Social Media as Part of Your Marketing Toolbox?

foreignwebmarketingcorrespondent — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:45:14 +0000

You’ve heard of social media and you’ve probably also heard it’s the next big thing to support effective and healthy web marketing. Okay, so you’ve got a website and you may have your personal Twitter account and you may even have a blog. This is all a good start, but the tools are only a start, you need to keep up: make sure your social media is a winning combination and constantly keep an eye out for the newest social media strategies out there that will put you on top in your industry!

Think of your website as this little gem from the past. Would you want to be seen in tomorrow’s team meeting using this (hey it even comes with a wrist strap)? You wouldn’t, unless you want to treat everyone to a few morning laughs. You really want a Blackberry or an iPhone – a smart phone that works for you. Similarly, you also don’t want to solely rely on your website – you want a smart website that links with social media and offers your business healthy web marketing! Of the numerous social apps out there (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, YouTube and the list goes on and on), which ones should you use? All of them? Are they all NECESSARY for your healthy web marketing?

Web Marketing Therapy’s own guru Lorrie Thomas was recently quoted in the savvy article ‘Social Media Mash Up’, by Brittany Glen. Brittany’s brilliant article discusses useful social media tools and a few tips from industry experts on how you can make social media work for you! Lorrie explains, “Social media is driving search visibility…But companies must think service before sales to win with Web 2.0 tools. Social media marketing is all about building relationships.” So add a dab of social media to your website and see how easier it is to connect with your customers and partners while expanding your audience. Mike Freestone, owner of Holland, AIA/Freestone Design finds it much easier to communicate with his clients by using Twitter and keeping a blog. “Social media has put me in contact with clients I would have never reached otherwise.” Here’s what social media you can throw in your tool box (combined with your website):

Company Blog – Offering personal or professional insights will “…increase your company’s visibility by taking internal expertise and publishing it on a blog to become an authority,” in the wise words of Lorrie. Posting your expertise will attract new visitors to your site, as well as build a loyal following and thus increase your SEO – search engine optimization (web traffic to your site through search engines like Google).

Facebook fan page (for your company, not you!) – Share your business with Facebook users by including a company profile, contact details, link to your site, photos, news and videos. However, make sure you’d have a ‘fan following’. If Facebook users are not in your demographic, then snazzing up your page becomes a hobby rather than healthy marketing!

Google’s Buzz – Link your updates with your Google inbox and contacts! Experts like Nick Dumitru, president of search engine marketing firm Think Basis, Inc. projects this will be very popular very soon!

Google Alerts – get regular email updates on your company and how it’s faring on the world wide web

And don’t forget the good old Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr

With so many potential eggs to be dropped into your web basket, WHICH ones will work for you? Sure you could throw all of them into the mix, but there’s no point if they won’t make your online presence shine! Keith Vincent, director of marketing at PPAI explains the significance in choosing the right social media, “The important thing for us [PPAI] was to choose social media opportunities that offer the most value and that matched up best with our strategic initiatives. Equally important was to be sure we could manage our presence in each area. You can invest a lot of time in many different initiatives and really get nowhere.” In choosing your social media, consider this: while it’s FREE advertising, it takes TIME to post a blog, maintain your Facebook fan page, keep up with tweets and upload digital photos on Flickr. Which ones have the greatest impact for marketing your business? Decide how much TIME should be invested in social media on a daily basis and remember Lorrie’s advice: recycle your blog posts into a short tweet and post that same article on Facebook and on article-marketing sites. To read the full article visit Eight Legged Media (starts on page 17!)

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Have You Googled Yourself Lately? Plus Other Free Online Reputation Management Tools

treatmentspecialist — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:34:24 +0000

What are people saying about you online?

In the past, we’ve recommended web marketing must haves for monitoring your brand, including free tools like Google alerts. This recent article in MarketingProfs gives us Six Free Tools for Online Reputation Management! Yes, SIX great tools- and they’re all FREE.

This is perfect for those of us with control issues. You can learn how to leverage sites like backtype.com, boardtracker.com, and Friend Feed to connect with your target audience and take your marketing strategy to a whole new level!

As Dan Schawbel points out: Part of your brand is in the hands of others, so it’s critical that you monitor it before a flame becomes a forest fire.

So get busy employing these great web tool in your online reputation management program.

Thanks for the great tips, Dan. I’m looking forward to your Spring release

Additionally, we also like to employ a little tool we call - Go Google Yourself!

It’s always good to know what’s coming up on your search engine results pages (SERPs). The question that most people come to me with is: What if I see something undesirable in the search results?

There are several things you can do. You can join in the conversation with the goal of educating consumers and clarifying your business services and/or products. You can also contact certain sites and ask that any defamatory statements about your company be completely removed. It’s been my experience that ethical consumer advocacy sites will take down false and libelous statements.

What if you are unable to shake an online blemish? The good news is that if you are already engaged in web marketing best practices, you can make sure your online reputation won’t be permanently impacted by continuing to create quality content that outranks any online imperfections in the SERPs. That’s the beauty of publishing content that you can control yourself via your web site, blog, social marketing platforms, online press releases, etc. By using these tools to control and fill your SERPs, you can preserve your online reputation and make sure that any negative associations with your brand never see the light of day!

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Web Marketing Obsession – Google Alerts

Lorrie Thomas — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:16:56 +0000

: Stalking is Google Approved

Small Business Owners in Marketing Therapy – LISTEN UP! If you are doing all the wild web marketing work to make your small business BIG with web marketing (like article distribution, online press releases, blog content and more), then it is time to start obsessing over yourself and see what is being found about your organization on the world wide web!

Google Alerts is free technology and the *best* way to track what the world wide web is pulling up about you…see what your prospective customers see! You can tell Google (in a matter of 5 seconds of effort) what you want them to search and send you. Get feeds on web content with your name, company name, various spellings of your company name and VIOLA! The Google gods will spoon feed you scoop….and you can get this content once a day, weekly or as it happens….Google rocks (yes, we are total Google Girls) Those of you who are uber obsessive may even want to scope out your competition – get Google alerts on them too!

Stalking and obsessing with Google Alerts is actually Marketing Therapist aproved behavior. Google Alerts is a healthy web marketing practice, because it helps professionals stay self-aware, which is healthy marketing behavior.

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