That said there’s no doubt that the print media dominance has been severely eroded.

I’ve talked before about how the number of readers of print media has been dropping for several years now.

Will print media actually die off though?

Personally I can’t believe it will.

I suspect that what may happen is that we will move to print on demand. Something that everyone was trumpeting as the way forward back in the 1970’s.

Although then I think people probably believed papers would be delivered as though from a fax machine.

And Yet the Kindle…

Apparently Kindle owners rave about their beloved reader. Maybe its technology is a really great replacement for the printed word.

And of course as developers continue to work on the foldable screen pretty soon we wont need to heft a book sized object around. Instead we’ll be able to carry round a folded up piece of paper that when spread out instantly show you what was there previously or allows you to download other stories or information.

Exciting times?

What About the IPad?

Of course the iPad is pretty to look and again all its users are full of praise for this laptop killer. And yet is the screen as good as that used for the printed word?

Maybe not yet, although with the convergence of technology the type of screen we get with the Kindle may find its way onto the iPad 3.

Obviously it begins to look as though it wont be the blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all the other lovely social media that kills off newsprint.

It’s going to be whether the technology can replace newsprint with something equally easy to read and as convenient.

How do I know?

Firstly, I live in Manchester and I’ve seen notices tied to lampposts telling me where I can’t park as filming is happening.

Secondly I’m getting an amazing number of tweets about Captain America from many of the people who use Twitter in Manchester.

And interestingly, from people who don’t live in Manchester but have connections there.

If you’ve a business do you see the power that can give you?

Captain America filming has generated a vast amount of interest across the UK and in Manchester in particular. People are almost queuing up to tweet about it. Certainly if you search on “CaptainAmerica” you’ll see tweets every few minutes at the moment.

Do company press releases do the same thing? Usually not. And yet if you’ve something interesting you can say via Twitter you can also generate interest in your followers and the people who follow them.

And if you’ve set Twitter up correctly a lot of your followers should be the market you’re serving. Exactly the right people to get your message.

And that’s not even counting the people blogging about it at the moment.

So maybe this social media thing can be used by business!? What do you think?

Interesting…

Internet marketing has radically changed the way we all do business. Social media is one component of that. It’s the newest and it too has the ability to change the way you do business.

And it’s not by joining Facebook or hanging around on Twitter. Just doing that wont give you value in terms of sales, more sales and, much though I hate the word, Branding!

You need to know what to do. What’s the point in having to make the mistakes that us early adopters did. Yes I’ve got over 6,000 followers on Twitter.

So what? It doesn’t matter a hoot if they don’t make money for your business.

So think about this…

Have you a strategy to include and integrate social media into what you’re doing? Because if you remember it was only a few years ago that people were saying you didn’t really need a website.

And now you’ve got people making a very decent living from a business that sells purely through a web site. I’ve several clients who do exactly that. Can I improve what they do.

You bet!

Often people just don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what others have successfully tried either.

Even if they’ve been on internet marketing courses, or “how to do SEO” courses!

I conducted a social media course this month and this company has Facebook, a blog and are on Twitter. They were amazed when I showed them one very common technique that changed the way they looked at some of the Internet marketing side of their company.

So if that training can cause such a change in outlook why is there no funding to help business do it?

And by the way this isn’t a particularly small company. They’ve got real passion behind their business and want to do it well. But it’s still a case of you don’t know what you don’t know.

Do you know what you don’t know?

Social Media Marketing or social marketing

Social marketing also covers blogging, which only really started in December 1997 and started to take off much later around 2003/2004. Similarly Twitter started in March 2006 and continues to gain followers.

Social marketing experts tend to be people who are self-taught and usually have an Internet marketing and geeky background – guilty on all counts!

Why use social marketing at all?

Firstly, there are some companies that don’t even need it.

However, for the vast majority social marketing is a very worthwhile experiment. Be careful though as it does have a time cost and if you’re not careful you can lose your way.

So the most important thing to recognise about social marketing is that it must be integrated into your overall marketing strategy.

Using such an approach means that you can combine your use of social marketing with advertising, customer relationship building, customer service, sales, pr, telesales – you name it!

So social marketing can increase the number of times you interact with your prospects and customers. It can also increase your speed of response, which can defuse critical customer service problems more rapidly.

Your first forays into social marketing should be viewed as experimental and changeable as you need to find what works for your company.

Social Marketing Working For You

It’s easy to get started with social marketing. But it’s important that you work out your goals first.

Do you want to position your company as one of the experts in your field? Maybe you want to be seen as a thought leader? Perhaps all you want are leads or to handle customer service?

Whatever your goals are, they should be written down and agreed before anything else happens.

Then  look at your customers and prospects. What social tools do they use? Which ones could you encourage them to use to talk with you?

Then look at the social media you want to use. Find the appropriate tools that make lighter work of social media. For example there are offline blogging clients that make blogging easy. Or Twitter clients that make customer service a snip.

Above all, don’t be afraid to find some help on social marketing. Some of us have been through the learning curve and can help evolve a social marketing strategy and advise on tools to assist you.

The important thing is not to re-invent the wheel and to make a decision about whether social marketing is right for you right now.

However, the unexpected amounts of snow meant that it was totally impossible.

I was looking forward to helping people decide whether Social Media Marketing was right for their business. And then if it was showing them strategies to use to make the most of it, whilst not taking all their time.

Why Use Social Media Marketing?

Firstly most businesses already use one form of social media marketing, also known as business networking. Where you go to meetings to talk with other people.

The reason you should test whether social media marketing is right for you is because it’s become another marketing channel and people may expect you to use it.

The Problem With Social Media Marketing

There are so many different ways to get involved with social networking. As I’ve said before, just some of those ways include:

1. LinkedIn
2. Blogging
3. Squidoo
4. Hubpages
5. Digg
6. Facebook
7. Reddit
8. Stumbleupon
9. YouTube

And on, and on…

So how do you decide what to do, when to do it or even how to do it?

Funnily enough my audience would have discovered exactly that!

The What, When And How Of Social Media Marketing

The first thing to is to decide what you want this type of marketing to achieve. That’s part of the what. Remember it’s internet based but can be used in every other marketing channel you have too.

The next ‘what’ is decide what you want to say, and who you’re going to say it to to meet your goal(s).

And the final part of the ‘what’ is to decide which tools can communicate your message most effectively.

There’s much more to it than that but for the moment let’s go on to ‘When’. The question that arises is when should we do this type of marketing. The simple answer to that is when you have something to communicate with your chosen audience.

Notice that I’ve been saying “with your chosen audience” and not “to your chosen audience” and the reason is that your audience is in a conversation with you. And they have the ability to simply stop the conversation dead.

If you simply broadcast stuff to them all the time it’s not a conversation.

Lastly we come to ‘How’ to communicate with them. This comes down to having a social media policy, choosing who will use social media on behalf of the company (ideally all of your employees) and then working out the most effective times to do it and the expected amount of time people should invest in working with social media.

Questions like:

• Q1 How can we prevent employees spilling the beans about what happens inside our company?
• Q2 What about if our customers leave negative comments?
• Q3 Isn’t it a gift to competitors spying on what we’re doing?
• Q4 Isn’t my use of Twitter and social media a complete waste of time?
• Q5 Will my employees spend all day using social media without doing the job they’re paid for?

And of course all these are perfectly valid questions. However, think about this.

Preventing Employees Spilling the Beans

If you have a social media policy in place employees understand their responsibilities in using social media and the consequences of its misuse.

Still the possibility remains that you could have a rogue employee who tarnishes your reputation. That is actually no different to the situation before social media came along. And with the advent of social media it can actually be easier to fix if an employee messes up.

Customers Leaving Negative Comments

Firstly, thank them for bringing your attention to the issue they raise. After all pre-social media you were unlikely to get much feedback as to why your best customer suddenly went to another supplier, or your products weren’t selling as you’d hoped. Then do something about it and demonstrate that you took note and acted.

Remember you can’t shout louder than your customers on the Internet at the moment. So negatives will be heard. It’s what you do about it that speaks to your customers and prospects louder than any advertising.

Competitors Spying On You

Firstly people who follow others are unlikely to be leaders.

So using social media to trumpet advances in your products and services ensures your prospects and suppliers see you as the leader in innovation in your sector.

Why then would they buy elsewhere – provided you backup your offerings with a great customer service of course.

Wasting Your Time With Social Media

It is very easy to allow social media to suck you into a black hole from which you emerge several hours later, possibly wiser but certainly under more pressure.

You need two things before diving into social media: your social media business goals and time control.

Knowing your business goals means you know what to respond to through your social media channels. You also know what you can generate that moves you towards your goals.

And it’s vital that you control your time on social media otherwise you can interact with people all day to the detriment of your business.

Remember that networking is a tried and trusted business activity it’s just that we don’t do it every hour of every day. You need to think along those lines for your interactions.

Employees Wasting Time On Social Media

Employees can be very creative in finding ways to while their time away. But that has always been the way and the web just made it easier and more fun. If you allowed it your employees could happily surf the web all day every day. The same applies to social media.

You need to ensure you have policies in place defining how social media is used in your company. One of which is the amount of time allocated to social media. Another the sites that your social marketing strategy has documented as the ones to concentrate on. And another that defines who will use social media and why.