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.

We’re all told what a great tool it is for business.

And yet, could it be the Emperor’s Clothes of Internet Marketing?

I really have lost count of the number of business owners who tell me they’re on Twitter and they just don’t see the point.

In earlier times I feel sure they would have been the asking why I thought a web site, or a blog was a “good thing.”

There are lots of people on Twitter who really still don’t get it. They don’t appreciate the possibilities that Twitter opens up to them.

Forget Celeb Watching

We can all twitter about and follow the stars as they tweet their latest adventure or lunch. However, that’s not the real aim of Twitter for business.

Getting More And More Followers Is Distracting

Contrary to some advice getting more followers is a good thing as it increases the likelihood of your tweets being seen and maybe even acted upon.

However, followers should arrive organically drawn by your content. That way there is a reason for you to talk to them.

Finding The Right People Is Key

Twittering is like online networking and it’s important at you engage in the conversations going on a round you, help when you can, comment and add value to the community.

The most important tactic you have is to follow the key people in the industry you’re in. You need to see what experts are talking about. You need to know what your suppliers, customers and ideal prospects are saying.

Knowledge really is power and positions your company as an expert in your field. And expertise brings rewards in the form of customers who are looking for the experts.

Everyone I know Is Way Too Important For Twitter

Maybe you don’t think it’s important to follow some lowly worker who is in your ideal prospects company? That worker could be the source of useful intelligence that puts you ahead of your competition.

Maybe no one you deal with is on Twitter. However, not being on Twitter is like saying that you don’t need a web site because no one else has one.

Having a web site, like being on Twitter, enables you to be ready when people want to check your web site. Having Twitter allows you to help mould the conversation your industry is having.

Plus, did you know that Google indexes Twitter conversations? Do your prospects use Google? Then having keyword-rich (and useful) Tweets are going to show up in Google search pages.

Note: Check out my FREE Twitter For Business handbook. Plus get updates on tools and ways to use Twitter more successfully as it develops and matures.

.

When you read Twitter Power’s follow figures in screen shots used they look to be late 2008. By using them you can see how massively the followers have grown for the people Joel quotes.

However, I digress…

The book is subtitled “How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet At A Time.” It’s an ambitious plan, however I think that Joel has pulled it off.

Twitter Power Makes It Seem Easy

The book doesn’t rely on all the new tools that arrive, become fashionable then sink without trace. Instead in concentrates on the fundamental “how-tos” to successfully incorporate Twitter into your social media strategy and provides step by step instructions in its use, and notes how to avoid abuse.

It goes into the details you need to succeed in Twitter.for example Joel gives you ways of creating your own Twitter background – a key part of getting followed.

7 Killer Strategies For More Followers

Joel gives 7 ways of getting people to follow you. Although as Joel points out building a list of followers doesn’t happen overnight no matter what you do!

The easiest one to implement immediately is to add your Twitter name to your signature.

7 Tweet Types For Everyone To Use

Twitter Power breaks down the Tweets that Joel suggests you use into

1. Classic “this is what I’m doing” Tweets
2. Opinion Tweets
3. Mission Accomplished Tweets
4. Entertainment Tweets
5. Question Tweets
6. Picture Tweets
7. Tweet Sequences

Stuffed With Useful Powerful Content

The whole of Twitter Power is very useful for advanced Tweeters and new Tweeters alike. Joel shows how to use Twitter for customer support, to build your brand to find experts, how to track Tweets, using Twitter auto responders and much, much more that has the marketer in me salivating!

Crucially Joel also gives a highly experienced legal eagle a chapter to explain the niceties and dangers to be aware of when using Twitter. Look out for assumed contracts is all I’ll say on that subject!

In addition Joel has his business partner Ken Burge write a chapter on how you can extend Twitter to make it even more useful for your business and gives URLs to code you can use too.

One thing is very clear. That is that Twitter can help you get your message out in a way that doesn’t intrude in the same way that mass advertising does.

In conclusion if you’ve any thoughts of getting into Twitter for your business you must buy Twitter Power. In fact click here and get it now, remember whilst you’re thinking others are taking action!

Digital marketing is a set of tools that are available to any company. How to use them to best advantage comes down to deciding what strategy or strategies to use in  marketing the company.

After all if everybody in your market sector is on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter or any of the other social media sites how do you stand apart?  You’re part of the social media wallpaper. you can be easily browsed over before you even know you’ve had a visitor.

Instead your marketing strategy might call for tactics that don’t lead with digital marketing. Maybe your tactic is to run an advertising campaign in magazines you know your key customers (and their like) read. Or perhaps you could run a postcard campaign offering a nice freebie for calling you up, or visiting one of your digital marketing tools, such as your blog or maybe following you on Twitter.

Remember marketing is all about getting more leads, better qualified leads and more profitable leads into your sales funnel.

And yet when it comes down to it the digital tools we have available are simply a way of building a list of interested prospects and then funnelling them through to buy from you. 

And I think the problem we currently have is that digital marketing tools are springing up all around and there are very few true experts yet.

Twitter Marketing!

After all think of Twitter…

It’s only been going since the middle of August 2006. Not many people knew about it and it’s grown and grown to the current situation where there’s a lot of buzz about it.  And yet how many people could genuinely say they were experts in Twitter when new applications and clients are being developed for it all the time.

My own Twitter handbook is already outdated, although I do send email updates to the people who downloaded a copy.

And despite being on Twitter almost from the beginning I still discover interesting things about it all the time. And the challenge for many companies and "marketing gurus" is to make Twitter and other social media sites work for them.

Often the Internet is likened to the Wild West. I absolutely agree with that idea and just like the Wild West new boundaries are still to be discovered. So always treat any self-avowed expert with caution until you see whether they really understand the buzz words they use.

And when it comes to "digital marketing" that caution applies even more.

And of course I just had to follow the David Ogilvy character!

There have been other cases of brand hijacking, fans writing further stories about Star Wars for example. And the Internet has made it easy to share your own stories based around other famous characters.

However, as I’ve said before the brand becomes what your fans/users/customers/clients want it to be. So you need to think long and hard before coming down on anyone who does "hijack" your brand. Because they may enhance it for you and even take it in new directions you weren’t even aware of.

And of course brand hijacking does matter, so it’s important that you keep abreast of new ways of working that could affect your business.

Currently it’s social media and Twitter. So if you’re in Film, TV or you’re writing books you need to reserve your names in Twitter before someone else uses them.

Registering Your Twitter Name

And you need to do it quick because people are registering a lot of different names, I suspect in the hope that they become valuable in the same way domain names have!

Names like Winston Churchill, Leonardo Da Vinci, Washington, Manchester even a Motorway (the M62) and try registering CarInsurance – yes, they’re all gone already.

There appear to be no country names available…

So whether Social media is here to stay or vanishes forever in a year’s time it’s important that you put a little effort into registering the names you want on Twitter (and on the other social media sites too).

Get my Free Guide to Setting up and using Twitter in business (before I revise it and start selling it!)

10 Essential WordPress Plugins is aimed at Internet Marketers.

Good work by Tim & Anthony Buchalka yet they have missed what I consider to be some essential plugins.

So without more ado I add my own top 10 to theirs, and these are in no specific order:

Another plugin that I find very useful when I’m writing about The Apprentice (with Sir Alan Sugar) is the InSeries plugin which allows you to link a series of posts and to show a table of contents to each post. See here for an example of The Apprentice Series

So in a bid to at least keep a track of the Twitter tools I use and to help other get to grips with them I’m posting them here.

1. Qwitter: You get told when one of your followers leaves
2. Tweet Scan: Allows you to set-up and save searches
3. Twuffer: You can schedule your tweets for later
4. Twitterank: find out where you rank against all the other Twitterers
5. TweetStats iscover statistics on which day you tweet most and the top twitter trends
6. TweetValue:See how much your Twitter profile is worth in dollars
7. TwitterCounter: Shows the top 100 most popular Twitterers and how your followers are growing – or falling
8. Twellow :: Twitter Search Directory, (Twitter Search Engine)
9. Twist – see trends in twitter. You can check and chart your keywords as they appear in Tweets.
10. TwitterBuzz – The most popular links on Twitter – URL Popularity
11. Twitscoop – Search twitter, see what’s hot right now
12. Twilert: Twitter search alerts via email
13. Tweet Beep: Get alerts via email
14. CheapTweet: Twitter Deals, Coupons, Sales and Discounts ( for US based Twitterers)
15. Twitter Directory
16. Twubble: (yes, I know!) – it checks your friends and see others who you might like to follow
17. TwitterKarma:  shows whether you link to your followers and whether the people you follow link to you
18. Twits Like Me: Find new friends on Twitter
19. MMMeeja Blog – Plot Your Twitter Followers On A Map
20. Twitterverse: See Tweets on a world map as they occur (well nearly!)
21. TweetLater: Schedule Future-Dated Twitter Tweets and set-up keyword alerts
22. Twitpic: Upload and display your photos on Twitter

In addition there are several Twitter addons for Firefox, including:

And in addition there are a number of useful WordPress plugins as detailed in the following link:

Interestingly enough I’ve had three people ask me whether I use use Google Alerts recently. My reply was that I’ve found it very useful. I then asked whether they used Twitter Alerts.

Twitter is currently the darling of the Internet Marketing community as it allows the equivalent of SMS messages between subscribers.

And the most interesting people subscribe to Twitter. For example I’m currently following Stephen Fry who’s currently in some rather nice tropical paradise where he sends TwitPics for his followers to see what he’s doing.

I’m also following a few of the world’s top marketing experts, if you check out the people I’m following you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, back to alerts…

There are at least two tools you can use to set-up Twitter alerts.

1. Tweetscan
2. Tweetbeep

Either of them do the job, although the one I use most is Tweetbeep as it seems to give more options at the moment.

The question people are still asking is whether Twitter and social media is a passing phase. My answer is, "does it matter whether it’s a phase or not, if your customers are using it?"

Because if you use it correctly you’re going to get a more personal and loyal connection with your customers.