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Is Twitter really going to help my business or is it a waste of time? Can Facebook increase my customer base?
The answer to these questions of course depends on what business you are in and what your aims are from "social marketing". If you are a band whose fan base is 14-25 year olds then you might spend all of your marketing efforts on social media - if you are financial planners for high net worth individuals then you would likely spend much less effort toward online social media.
But that is not to say that financial planners cannot benefit from social media - they will just need to be much more specific as to where they contribute and would want to weigh up the costs vs. benefits.
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Regardless of your target market, you will want to weigh up the costs of your (or a paid employees) time to "tweet" on Twitter or to update your Facebook page versus the potential benefits you might gain. Even if you expect that blogging may attract new customers to your web site, your time may be better spent in other areas of your business with a greater positive effect on your business.
If you decide that social media is a worthwhile marketing exercise - it is important to budget your time spent on this in proportion to the expected result. Remember - just because you aren't paying for a newspaper ad or "paying per click" does not mean that it is free.
The first and most obvious potential benefit is to gain new customers by exposing your business in another online venue. But to do this you need to be creative and interesting in a social setting. Think of it like going to a party with the aim of picking up business vs. picking up business at a business conference - you will need to act differently in the "social media" arena than on your business' website. You need to stand out and say something of interest to the people in your arena.
Blogging about the benefits of your products/services is not going to attract viral marketing (i.e. friends telling friends about a web page) - you can leave your product/service information to your standard web site. To attract interest and any sort of following you need to offer opinions, advice and stories of interest or humor.
The second and less obvious benefit from blogging and "tweeting" can come from links you place on these social websites back to your company website. While there are a number of aspects that go into increasing traffic to your website, links remain one very important aspect. This is because every link to your site that exists on the web counts as a vote towards your Google page rank.
The more links that you have on the web, the higher your ranking will be in the search engines - which means more people will discover your website. You can place links in the body of your messages and you can leave them in your message "signature" as well. In time, the search engines will deep scan the web and find those forum links.
Whatever social medium you choose to utilise - do not spam! Have something to say and do not just attempt to blatantly ask people to click on your link. This will of course not work with any legitimate potential customers - but possibly more damaging could be blacklisting by the social website. When posting to forums and blogs stick to areas which are relevant to your business - this is obvious for a few reasons but not least in that it will keep you interested and provoke ideas from you.
If you contribute to online social networks with quality and interesting posts (and tweets!) then your presence will be appreciated and your efforts should go rewarded with new enquiries for your business.
Twitter - www.twitter.com
Facebook - www.facebook.com
Linked In - www.linkedin.com
Orkut - www.orkut.com
Last
updated on May 26, 2009 by Jay Meredith.
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