Hey Guy’s & Gal’s,

Imagine you’re in a theater packed with people. There is a hum of chatter going on all about you. The show hasn’t started yet, just people talking about what is going on. You can feel the energy from all of those people around you.

In this mass group of people you hold a solution to a problem that can help many of them. Actually your solution can help a few thousand or even millions of them.

With so much going on, how can you possibly get them to take notice? They seem so pre-occupied with sharing with each other about their days that you aren’t quite sure how you’re going to break through all that chatter.

With all of these people around you, how would you grab their attention?
Imagine that theater is packed with 500 million people, how do you get a few million of them to take notice? How would you even get a few thousand people to notice what you are up to?

Currently that is the world of Facebook. With over 500 million people online and 50% of the population being active daily there is a sea of conversation occurring.

The business owner who understands how to break into those conversations makes money. The business owner who guesses might as well just not logon.

To stand out from the crowd and dominate with your marketing,

I invite you to consider the following three methods.

Marketing Message – Your marketing message is what will quickly grab someone’s attention. Your message will separate you from the competition by quickly revealing how you can save someone time, money, and sometimes both. Just imagine in a crowd of 500 million that you were the only one wearing a neon orange shirt. That is how you powerful your message should be.

Pique Interest – After your marketing message, you can’t look like everyone else. With the ability to share information about “what’s on your mind?” you can pique interest in a variety of ways. You can share interest piquing updates, videos, photos, notes and more. The more interesting your updates the more attention you can gather. When you have their attention you can convert it into sales.

Be Where Business Happens – Have you ever seen a plastic surgeon trying to conduct business at a Starbucks? I haven’t either! Many businesses still haven’t set up their business locations on Facebook. Creating a powerful fan page is the best way to give you a platform from which to do business.

I’d love to hear how you would stand out from the crowd, by posting your thoughts below.
Have a wonderful weekend
Tim

Hey Guy’s & Gal’s,

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about the opportunity to advertise on Facebook. Though I personally do not use Facebook, and I think mainly do to a time constraint on mt part, I’d like to know if you my followers from twitter and readers actually use Facebook for advertising and how you think it has either helped your business or not.

In a recent article on EzineArticles by Louise Steiner on the 12 Golden Rules, and How to Create Effective Facebook ads, I though Louise hit the nail on the head, even for advertising in general. Continue reading →

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.