Social Media Are Not Just For Giddy Teenagers!

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You may have heard about Myspace, the News Corp.-owned social networking powerhouse. Or Facebook, the rapidly growing network which is presently independent but might one day be owned by Google, Yahoo!, NBC, Tribune Co., or any other media company which recognizes the site’s massive potential for consumer leverage.

In a sense, marketing on the internet uses high technology to advance a very low-tech agenda. Like any offline marketing campaign from years ago, generating business demand online still boils down to an objective understanding of your product or service’s utility. You still need an informed and unbiased view of your target market. Effective and efficient use of the marketing mix (price, product, placement, promotion) is as important today as it was decades ago. None of this has changed.

But the dawn of the internet introduced a new variable: a breadth of consumer touch points previously unfathomable to most marketers. Social media are among the most promising channels; according to Nielsen/NetRatings, the top ten social networking sites grew 47% in 2006.

Now a company has a variety of ways to appear in front of its audience. Take Jalima Coffee as an example. This manufacturer of organic Mexican coffee differentiates itself from competitors with a strong prosocial mission, and hired Clicksharp Marketing to inject this brand image into new channels. One of the co-owners used LinkedIn to introduce the business community to her background in non-profit and international development. The company posted a video on YouTube documenting the manufacturing process and sharing a unique slice of culture with its viewers. Jalima’s Myspace profile is linked to over 500 friends: mainly coffee lovers and advocates of sustainable agriculture. Whenever the company’s marketing department chooses, they have an immediate channel with which to communicate news and events, product introductions, or just to say hello.

Moral of the story – forget what you may have heard about the typical user of any of these sites. Their convergence is taking place rapidly and ubiquitously. The sooner you join the network, the sooner you can forge meaningful connections with the stakeholders that are key to your business!

For more, I highly recommend reading Michelle MacPhearson’s Social Media Marketing Guide.

Content Marketing, a Paint by Numbers Guide to Creating Your Best Content Ever

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Content Marketing has always been important in the online marketing world, but unfortunately, so many people are still looking for the shortcuts and shiny solutions that they miss this most important aspect of marketing, namely, putting great content on your website or blog, and distributing it to all the right places, in all the right formats, so it gets you exposure, leads, and sales.

Without a content marketing strategy, neither your SEO or your social marketing efforts will be successful, as social signals are critical to SEO success, and good social content is critical to your company or brand.

The problem, of course, is that it seems like WORK. That nasty four letter word most marketers are allergic to. But here’s a strategy we use called Content Arbitrage, that will do the following things for you:

-Take the best ideas from your head to the marketplace with the least amount of work
-Create killer “link sucking” content that will raise your site in the search engines
-Give you a constant stream of social zingers you can blast the web with
-Impress your clients and entice them to trust you and buy from you

So, here’s how it works, step by step.

1. Think of the best current idea you have about your product or service that you know your prospects would be interested in, Google it to find great ideas and tips about it.

2. Do some light keyword research, to determine how people would search for this particular information.

3. Create a title and description for your content, that includes the key word.

4. Record, or write out, your best thinking on the subject. Breaking it into steps often helps, “5 tips” or “top 5 mistakes” articles are always interesting to people.

5. Distribute your content to as many different places as make sense for your niche. Once you have a great article or recording, you can easily create a video, PowerPoint presentation, article, podcast, and info graphics.

6. Create a new page or blog post, incorporating your writing, info graphic, video, etc.

7. Advertise your new page or post on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, and any other social networks you participate in.

8. Rinse and repeat weekly.

This method will help you create your best content, get it distributed to places that have their own built in traffic sources, with links back to your site, and give you several great social postings for the next week or so.

The key to this strategy is time and consistency. While most other online marketers are still dabbling in “tip of the day” marketing, you can be implementing this solid strategy that, over time, can pay massive dividends.