Website Design Solutions
Call Us at (978)822-8318
How do you use Social Media?
Is Social Networking a Successful Marketing Tool?
Social networking seems to be a major part of the average business owners marketing plan. People are spending several hours per week (or day) updating their profiles, looking for connections tweeting, and more in the hopes of building their business.
While many businesses declare that most of their marketing success is due to social networking efforts, I am skeptical about the value found in these claims. Yes, I am extremely positive that there are a lucky few that have landed a great sale based on a connection they made through LinkedIn, or someone they “friended” on Facebook or something they tweeted about on Twitter. Nevertheless, the majority of us have not had this type of success.
Working with clients on their marketing plan, I have heard claims of great social networking success. When we drill down into the statistics of what was achieved, however, more often than not, the greatest success from these networking sites lies in the number of connections, friends and followers that have been collected. Generally speaking, no actual personal contact with these people has been achieved – in fact, most of the people on these lists are completely unknown to the account holder. We are making “friends” with people that we have never met, don’t know, and will, in all likelihood never meet. In some cases, we will never even know their real name!
If one of your marketing goals is to grow your social networking fan base, then by all means, count this type of activity as a win. If, however, you are interested in more traditional business growth as defined by increased sales, customer loyalty, an expanded customer base and better branding, then perhaps more effort needs to be put into other marketing outlets. After all, you may have tens of thousands of people following you on Twitter, but if your business doesn’t turn a profit, can you really say that this is a successful marketing tool for you?
Don’t misunderstand, I do believe that social networking sites have a place within a comprehensive, well-thought out, integrated marketing plan.
Active participation with people linking back to you and/or your posts are a great boost to your website rankings. These sites also give you the opportunity to brand your business at no cost to you. They can also be used to drive traffic to other marketing media in your arsenal (e.g. your website, a promotional event, a TV/radio/newspaper advertisement).
If social networking is a part of your overall marketing plan and your branding and message are consistent and professional within the parameters of those sites, then you can certainly glean some type of success from them. If, however, you just sit at your computer updating your sites and letting people know of your latest adventures in anticipation of your thousands of connections, friends, and followers to start doing business with you, then you may be in for a very long wait.
I’d love to hear your comments and your thoughts on how you use social media and what steps you take to make sure that it returns a positive ROI.
Have a wonderful day.
Social Networking or Bust
Hey Guy’s and Gal’s,
I recent read an article on the New York Times that was entitled “The Web Means the End of Forgetting”
And one paragraph in-particular talked about “The Library of Congress” where it stated:
There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring — and permanently storing — the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006.
Now, not only the Library of Congress but, more and more employers are looking to the internet as a part of there search for new employees. In some cases this is a good thing, but then again maybe not.
If you have posted something in a negative light, that could be used against you as stated in the above article by JEFFREY ROSEN Published: July 19, 2010
So in leiu of all of this, does thing change your perception of social media? Does it change how you look at social media?
If you are outsourcing your social media tasks to a third party I would clearly define what they can or can not do, and if your doing it yourself I would be very careful how you portray yourself online.
What are your thoughts? I encourage you to be careful in your social media usage.
Have a wonderful day
Timothy
What No Sales?
What No Sales?
Just recently I put on a birthday sale where I thought at least a few people would take me up on my offer, but low and behold not one single taker on over 1,200 visitors to the post that I put out last week.
And I made it real simple.
- 1. I had a contact form so everyone could ask away
- 2. had descriptions of all the products I was putting on sale
- 3. reduced the prices by almost 50%
- 4. and included the by now buttons
and low and behold still no takers.
Since I didn’t get any takers it got me to thinking if I was doing anything wrong. And to be truthfully honest with you I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.
So I joined www.Fiverr.com and placed one gig and got one sale. Now granted, I only got $5.00 bucks for doing a custom twitter background, but a sale none the less.
Now don’t get me wrong I had a wonderful time creating the twitter background and I gained a new customer and a referral from that.
But it almost made me believe that you have to practically give away the farm in order to make any money. Now I know some designers and developers that are getting twice what I charge and they are in the same boat as I am, we’re just not making any money.
What gives?
What do I have too do to make any money from my services.
Can you help me solve my problem?
Hopelessly confused.
Tim
Birthday Sale!
It’s my birthday and I’d like to pass on the savings to you, my valued visitors and subscribers.
For the remainder of this week, I’d like to give you the opportunity to acquire my services at a greatly reduced rate. You can view all may services below, then fill out the form below this list and let me know what I can do for you. Continue reading
16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Hey Guy’s and Gal’s,
I hope your week is going well, I just wanted to drop you a quick note and let you know about a friend of mine that has some excellent thoughts and ideas on driving traffic to your blog or website,
Her name is Denis Wakeman, and she also has a 5 part Video Course that will really open your eyes over at http://masterbusinessblogging.com/
Here’s her article below:
Enjoy!
16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
You’ve got your blog set up and you’ve started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?
Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.
Continue reading
Where was social media a decade ago
The internet over the last decade has seen many drastic changes we never even thought would materialize. One such innovation is the creation of social networking sites. They attract a whopping number of members with the amazing features and versatile capabilities they make available to everyone.
Most people use social networking sites for the genuine purpose of linking up with family and friends worldwide. Where internet users have long relied on the simple email to stay in touch through cyberspace, these types of sites have offered a more enjoyable way to hook up and share news, information and milestones with hundreds, if not thousands of users scattered across the globe. Since most users may not have a website of their own, social networking sites provide an easy, all-encompassing portal to stay in touch with the rest of the world.
You can read about a friend’s latest involvement in an advocacy or follow another with the pictures he posts on his latest travel sortie. Being on a social networking site like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter for example, means having the capacity to easily communicate and share information wherever you are. In this aspect, these sites becomes a great aid in staying connected and keeping in touch.
There are other people, however, who use social networking sites to promote their own websites or businesses. Signing up on these social sites, they hope other users will explore their profiles and click on their links to visit their business sites. To a certain extent, it has worked for many, especially if they are in a group that shares the same interest as they do.
There’s no harm in using social networking sites to promote your interests, provided that you do so responsibly and considerately. As long as you don’t flood the site with unending updates to sell your business for free and get the site spammy, it can be an effective gateway for people to tell others what they’re good at and probably reciprocate such by providing opportunities for others to move themselves forward.
What thoughts could you give our readers who are just starting using social media. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Have a wonderful day
Tim
Recent Comments