Social Media Marketing



Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is the combination of technology with social interaction to create perceived value for your company, product or service. If you haven’t heard of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Blogs at this point, you might not be watching TV news, Internet reports or any of the newspapers that are still publishing.

So how can this benefit you and your business?

Social Media Marketing gives you a new outlet to make connections and establish an online identity for your products, services and ideas, plus you’ll learn what your customers really think.

Social Media opportunities fall into five types:

  1. Statement of your identity - your statement of your value, who you are, and where you can be found. Potential customers happen upon your online identity that you define and declare. This includes everything from your About Us pages on your blog or website to your MySpace profile. With these sites, there is very little interaction outside of your own declaration. but this statement is critical in defining how you can benefit your target consumer.
     
  2. Enhance Identity through Association – These sites give your customers and others that you network with the opportunity to associate themselves with you and you with them. This happens by becoming “Friends” on MySpace, by you and your customers’ BlogRoll, or through their social bookmarking. This is the online equivalent of someone wearing clothing with your logo on it. Make it easy for your customers to bookmark your site, blog posts, etc with their favorite tool.
     
  3. User-Initiated Conversation – Sites that give your customers the opportunity to create their own statements or questions, and your opportunity to respond. This is your opportunity to be helpful and responsive to them. Message boards, forums and “groups” sites such as Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, community sites, etc. are all examples of this type of Social Media site.
     
  4. Provider-Initiated Conversation – Sites that give you the opportunity to find out what your customers think, feel, love and hate about your product. Here, you can ask them and challenge them to learn how to make your company more successful. Be sure to respect the customer and be polite. Visitors are not only deciding what they think of your product, but also whether or not they like you.
     
  5. In-Person Interaction - Nothing beats face-to-face and there are several social media sites that simply help you find, organize or publicize events where you can meet your customers in person and they can interact with each other.

Social Media Marketing offers a plethora of low cost ways for people to learn more about what you are all about. Building credibility and your expertise on the Internet.

For a complete list of Social Media Marketing tactics check out the list to the right, dive into the various descriptions, and add social media marketing tactics to your marketing plans: