Social Media Marketing 101

Social media is here to stay, and just like the former regime has realized it, so should you. Business Today brings you a few ideas to market yourself via your favorite social networks. By Nadine El Sayed

If there is one thing the past seven months has taught us, it is just how powerful social media can be. Businesses were quick to notice too — in less than a month, almost every company worth its salt launched a Twitter or Facebook page. The advent of social media has pushed companies to become more creative as well. Instead of a traditional ‘invite the press and hope for a review of your new products’ PR stunt, Nokia held a press conference solely for the movers and shakers of the blogging world to publicize its new Nokia E7 smartphone a few months ago.
If you’re already a big shot in the business world, new to entrepreneurship or just interested in selling the occasional pie here and there, it’s time to tap into the world of online marketing, and more specifically, social media marketing to get your message across. Here are a few marketing ideas to reach out to your customers online without losing your mind — or potential new clients.

Identify your target market
Social networks are open to everyone — everyone who can afford internet access, that is. Consequently, it is only good for reaching a certain target market. To start with, you need to identify who you want to connect with and then find out if those same people are online.

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Social media still not central to B2B online marketing

Despite the fact that many companies leverage social media to listen to customer feedback, many still do not consider the medium central to their B2B online marketing campaigns.

According to a new report from Dell, as many as three-quarters of companies leverage social media to listen to online conversations and respond to them when necessary. Additionally, 64 percent of them incorporate this feedback into product and service revisions, while 76 percent discuss it internally.

However, social media is still not a focus of many of these businesses' marketing efforts. Only 20 percent place the channel at the core of their online promotional efforts, while 50 percent say their social campaigns are serious but not a core function.

"Listening and responding to customers is so basic and fundamental. The emergence of social media elevates how companies can act on the feedback they get from customers," Karen Quintos, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Dell, explains.

If B2B marketers want to succeed, they need to do a better job of incorporating social media into their broader campaigns. The medium is unique in that it offers brands a way to garner feedback from customers, but they need to ensure they have a strong presence in the social sphere if they want to maximize its potential.

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Multinationals need custom online marketing approaches

Multinational companies should adapt their online marketing activities to suit their markets.

Adjusting social media campaigns and other online marketing activities will mean communications remain locally relevant.

Michael Edwards, director of digital and experiential marketing for health and beauty firm Amway, told Clickz his company uses Facebook to engage with distributors across the world.

Describing this method of communicating as "transformative", Mr Edwards said: "It is a technology that connects the global, regional and local dots."

But it needs to be used correctly. Amway wants to be locally relevant, which is why Mr Edwards explains the 30-odd members of staff tasked with social media customise Amway Facebook pages to support this strategy.

"We look at Facebook customisation in the same way that we look at the products we launch and support around the world," he added.

The launch of Google+ this week is likely to provide new challenges for those working in online marketing, regardless of its similarities to existing channels.

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When it Comes to Marketing on Social Media, Consistency is Key

The numbers behind the social networking surge are startling: Facebook has more than 600 million active monthly users that the Web site reports spend close to 22 billion minutes daily on the site. While those numbers sound mind-numbingly high, small businesses should see them as dollar signs.

Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era and the founder of social media company Hearsay Social, said Facebook has given rise to a new consumer psychology and businesses need to embrace the new-found accessibility by making sure their social media practices work in their favor rather than an uncontrolled liability.

Shih offered the following tips for small businesses on how to embrace social media to generate business and boost their bottom lines:

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The importance of social media for marketing to women

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, 90% of U.S. adult women are responsible for health-care decisions for themselves and their spouses/significant others, children, and/or adult relatives. This includes dental care. Unfortunately, many dentists fail to market effectively to women. In many cases, they actually alienate the very demographic they are trying to target.

Women have more control over purchasing decisions and spending power than ever before. In fact, women-owned small businesses contribute more than $3 trillion to the economy annually.

Female consumers are also the most likely demographic to use social networks when making purchasing decisions. When it comes to personal health and their loved ones, women are much more likely to be influenced by their peers in choosing a provider.

In the U.S., 56 million women use Facebook on a regular basis. This makes the social networking platform one of the most valuable tools when it comes to introducing yourself and your practice. There are many different ways to effectively attract women to your practice using Facebook:

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Why is Social Media Marketing Hard to ‘Get’?

Just last month I wrote a piece on whether Social Media is past its best which concluded that Social Media Marketing really works for those who are prepared to work at it and there is now a fresh survey which shows that while more than half of small business questioned admitted that Social Media Marketing was important, almost 60% were not using it.

Why? Why is something so obviously effective so hard to implement? There is not much point in asking questions if there is no answer we can look at and the issue, across the board, every time seems to be the same: Social Media Marketing is so new and so different that many companies, large and small, locked in a traditional mindset, simply do not know how to use it.

How, for instance, do you go from putting ads online and in newspapers to allowing your employees to play around in Facebook and Twitter, placing postings and Tweets which do not differ much from musings and interacting with Facebook visitors and still call this work?


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8 Tips For 'Social' Marketing

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms can be effective ways to market your company, but only if you do it right. Power up your efforts with these tips from Web-based application provider Wildfire.

Perhaps you're just discovering the power of social media. Or maybe you've known about for quite some time. Either way, if you're using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to market your company, you probably want to make those campaigns as effective as they can be, right?

Last week I wrote about Wildfire, a company that offers a Web-based application for social media marketing. Here are some tips, courtesy of Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom, that might help you maximize the effectiveness of your "social" campaigns.

Tip #1: Keep It Simple And Easy

The shorter the entry form, or the fewer steps required to engage, the more people will enter your contest. And if you're looking to collect user-generated content, ask for content that consumers have readily available--for example, photos of their vacations, pets, friends, children, and hobbies. This is more effective than asking for content that requires effort to create, such as a video.

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Online video tips to help improve marketing success

Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week, Mark Shapiro, a San Diego PR consultant, looks at ways online video can help business marketing. Find him on Twitter @SRSTechPR or on the Web at www.srs-techpr.com.

Online video is one of today’s most engaging and powerful social-media marketing mediums.

It’s a wonderful tool for showing what your company does, explaining how your products work and spotlighting customer testimonials. Many businesses want to use video to help them market their products and services but don’t know how to do it well.

To be effective, a Web video has to look good, sound clean, and be short.

You don’t have to hire a professional video producer to shoot your online videos. You can do it yourself if you just remember a few basics.

Keep it simple. A plain background behind a talking head or a product demonstration is very effective — the viewer’s attention stays on the subject. Also, video with a plain background compresses better for streaming versus a background with lots of details and colors.

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Facebook is driving online marketing, says internet specialist

Social media marketing in general and Facebook in particular are the most important drivers in online direct marketing, according to one UK-based internet specialist.
Ben Hatton, who runs a digital media agency in Liverpool, told the Liverpool Daily Post that businesses needed to embrace Facebook and social media marketing if they wanted to be successful online.

He dispensed his advice following the announcement by the Internet Advertising Bureau that internet marketing has now tipped the £4 billion mark - £500,000 above the spend for TV advertising last year.

Mr Hatton said: "The growth of the mobile and social media world is only going to continue, and advertisers will increasingly head online as technological advancements bring new ways to reach consumers."

Facebook's model for marketing has been considered to be so successful that other social networking sites are considering taking it on

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