Posts Tagged ‘Online Marketing’
Social Media Marketing – Why is Social Media Marketing the Rage? Why Do So Many Get it WRONG?
Social media marketing is, without question, the rage of the day in the world of online marketing. Why? Why so much ado over social media marketing? Why do SO many fail to use it properly? To a large extent, social media marketing is driven by the growing popularity of network marketing companies. Consider the concept most are taught for building a networking business. You’re told to make a list of friends and family to introduce to your opportunity.
Why friends and family? The idea is that these are people you already have a relationship with and, as a result, hopefully, they trust you. People do business with those whom they trust. Therefore, if they trust you and they have an interest in what you have to offer they are more likely to buy from you over someone else. There are, however, some problems with marketing to your personal circle of friends and family. First, it is an extremely limited market. Just because someone is your friend or a family member does NOT mean they have an interest in what you have to offer. Those who DO have an interest may be VERY few.
Social media marketing is a way to overcome the limiting aspect of marketing to friends and family. Through it you can effectively enlarge your circle of friends to a virtually UNlimited size. Additionally, you can easily find friends who DO have mutual interests with you, thus having an interest in what you have to offer. To benefit fully from social media marketing just think about how friendships are developed. Is it not by each one sharing with the other, sharing thoughts, ideas, experiences? Over time, the relationship becomes more solid and a certain level of mutual trust develops.
But HERE is where so many get it WRONG. Social media marketing is about making friends, building relationships, developing trust. It is NOT a medium for blatantly advertising your opportunity. Use it in the proper way and you will reap the rewards, a LARGE circle of friends with mutual interests. You can learn more about using social media and building a network marketing business here.
Beer Brewing 101
Tune In To What Your Customers Really Want
Customer relationship marketing is powerful in theory, but troubled in practice. We need to take time to figure out how and why we are undermining our own best efforts.
Perhaps we’re overlooking the fundamental elements of a good customer relationship program. With the means to connect with customers easily, maybe we’re rushing to cash in on the potential rewards, while forgetting the essentials of all relationships: intimacy and trust.
Close examination reveals that relationships between companies and consumers are suffering. U.S. satisfaction rates are at an all-time low. Complaints, boycotts and growing unhappiness with big corporations are strong indicators that most CRM isn’t working.
Ironically, the very steps marketers are taking to build relationships with customers are often responsible for destroying these connections. Companies may delight in learning more about their customers and providing services to please them, but customers are fed up. They’re tired of irrelevant survey questions, overwhelming product choices, features they’ll never use in phone plans and cars, and rebate-driven buyer reward programs.
The New Frontier: Mining the Internet
With the proliferation of online stores that complement traditional outlets, companies now have a tremendous source of information about consumers’ preferences. Because a traditional store may not always have a product on its shelves, purchase results are not always a good measurement of desires. Online stores can track consumer demand patterns more precisely, as they offer extensive ranges of products to national and global customers.
The web is more than a sales channel; it is a powerful means of collecting data in real time. The Internet is truly the new frontier in connecting with the customer, offering a huge opportunity for companies to improve customer relationships.
The New Social Marketing: Buzz and Word of Mouth
Where does marketing enter the mix? Some experts claim the old days of “push” marketing are over, where a company shoved a one-way message to customers via print or TV. Corporations are asking themselves just how much return on investment there really is from a 30-second Super Bowl commercial.
Consumers are turning away from media and, instead, tuning into each other. Engagement and word of mouth marketing are the buzzwords of this new era. Customers are doing their market research online and listening to each other. Unfortunately, many marketers continue to look at engagement in a one-sided way.
Corporate blogs have become an excellent resource for CEOs and others to connect with customers in a personal manner. In spite of the possible pitfalls in opening two-way communication between the public and employees, there is much to be gained by being personable, accessible, authentic and transparent.
Customers are already communicating with each other online about products and experiences with your company. If you can join the conversation in a real way, in real time, you’ll have an advantage over those who remain silent and inaccessible behind corporate doors.
Now there is finally a way to discover what customers want, and a way to connect with them authentically. But there are risks involved in being honest and transparent. Will you and your company take the risk?
Social Media - Welcome To Reality Online
The use of social media encompasses a broad range of online media types. While some might only think of a social network like MySpace there are actually several social media formats that contain significant marketing potential for online business.
While others may think you are simply enjoying the multiple aspects of social networking, the truth of your interest may likely be tinged with a business focus.
What that doesn’t mean is that you post simply to leave a traceable link back to your business website. Those who visit any social media site see through posts that are overtly geared toward marketing. In many cases social media consumers view this as spam even if the social network owners do not. In the end, you can lose credibility of you don’t work as a meaningful contributor in a social media environment.
Social media can be presented in many different forms. Let’s take a peak at a few of them.
YouTube and other similar video sites These videos can be funny, serious, off the cuff and sometimes political in nature. You can show your business in a humorous light and allow individuals to be curious about you and your business.
MySpace and other social networks This form of social media is popular because it draws together multiple elements of social marketing and makes them accessible to the masses of individuals that may view social networking as an online version of reality television.
Blogs This is a form of social media if only because it does allow interactive exchanges between the blogger and the reader.
Forums This can allow you to have an individual voice willing to discuss topics of interest to the majority. As with all social media you can provide a link to your site. If you are viewed as a trusted source you will likely find forum members following you to your site to learn more.
Podcasting This is an audio stream that can allow a visitor to hear a personal message from you. This can have a pronounced impact in social marketing.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does provide something for you to consider as an addition to other marketing strategies you may have in place. Social media allows you to take your message to the people and have fun while you share your message.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to be real. The entire Internet community has a low tolerance for supposed spam so make sure you don’t use social media as simply another form of online advertising.
Top 3 Tips researched to get your website on the Top
Tip 1: Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is either taken very lightly or taken so consciously that the results are undesirable. Give around 30% of your time to understand what exactly is your business requirements or on what products/services would you get more business. What exactly are you planning to target and what is your Audience? Conduct a market analysis of it and filter our 10 key phrases that best suit your business. If your website is fresh and /or you have just started with your online business, target light-weight (less-researched) key phrases. Go for targeting more of long-tailed key-phrases rather than single key-words. Give proper Title and Meta, appropriate Alt tags. Check your content in relative to your Meta you have kept and see that your page gets easily downloaded.
Tip 2: Link Building
Once you are done with On-page optimization, put your best of efforts to gain as much inbound links you can. There are multiple ways that you can work on to achieve a golden value for your website. At the outset, submit your website URL to 100+ Search Engines and 500+ Quality online directories that give you quality link-backs. Write good relevant articles and submit them into quality Article sites. You may also submit your Press-notes into quality Press-release directories. Put your Ads into free classified directories. You may also go for link-exchange campaigns but Google has stopped giving much weightage to these links.
Tip 3: Social Media
Make a list of quality social networking sites where in you can go and bookmark your important web-pages into these social sites. You may also create your blogs (relevant to your services), post good content on these and make them more interactive for more visitors to visit them. One such good social marketing is posting comments into good blogs or forums and thereby creating a rich link-base. You are sure to get high traction through social media marketing. It may go as high as getting 2000 hits in just 5 days on one single comment posted with a link to our website. It really makes a lot of difference!
Buyers rely heavily upon search and social media for researching products and services.
It is therefore critical that you not only have relevant and detailed content on your website, but you must be showing up where they are searching for you. To do so you must undertake an integrated and comprehensive search and social media marketing effort.
For more information on these and how to rank your website on the top SERPs or if you want us to get your website rank on the top of SERPs, contact us on 201-777-2366 or email your details at kj@semaphore-software.com.
Best Use of Social Media Local Search Marketing
One of the best ways to marketing your products and services online is through social media marketing. Its easy to get lost in all the various personalized methods of marketing, especially in local online marketing.
To get a feel of the local pulse and how they feel about your products and services, your business should use social media. When doing strategic local marketing, you should make use of social media will give you a chance to keep in touch with members of your community.
If the term social media seems a wee bit unfamiliar to you, then how about blogging, Facebook or Twitter? Join the hundreds of community journalists who make their presence felt in their communities through blogging. The only difference is that you will be blogging not only to interact with your community, but also to share with them important information about your business, which will respond to a particular need in the community.
A growing part of our online necessities is social media marketing. Many companies have joined the bandwagon and created fan pages in sites like Facebook.
The reason why social networking sites are effective is the fact that people who befriend you or follow you actually do so willingly. This is an indication that they are interested in your business, and that they could be future customers.
Social networking can be a successful tool when looking to increase strategic local marketing. It doesn’t take much effort or cost to get your business set up with a social networking site. You will be surprised on how quickly you gain “fans” or “followers” of your companies site. You can also target your markets by age, sex, interests, geographic and more.
To get higher ranking in the search engines, and to drive more traffic to your site, social media marketing will help you gain leads without having to spend extra money.
It cost almost nothing (other than a bit of time) to promote your business through social networking. You can definitely hire others for relatively low costs to setup and manage your social media sites if your time is spent better elsewhere in your business.
A company should be responding to a customers need, and the best way to determine those needs (whether its products or services) is through social media marketing. This is a great way to build your business brand that is targeting a specific community.
By using the various social networking sites, it will easier for you to respond to queries about your business, It is also easier to increase brand awareness, build a stronger reputation, and combat any negative issues being hurled against the business.
To better build your online branding and your Local branding, you will need the help of social networks. Tapping into these networks will not only gain greater access to potential customers in Local, but in other parts of the globe and into a market that may be bigger than your imagination.