Social Marketing

Anyone in business these days would have to be living in an area with no internet connection, to not understand that if they don't have a website, they are neglecting a major marketing strategy.

Unfortunately many website designers are specialists that design you a beautiful website and publish it for you and consider that their job is done.

You put your website URL on your stationary and you gain a few link backs from friends and clients. Your website name is your company name and when you do a search for this, you come up in the search engine results.

Then you sit back and wait for the results. Quite often the results are extremely disappointing. You don't know why and you don't know what else you need to do. Often you simply assume that the web is just not the marketing tool you have been led to believe.

Your Website Is An Online Brochure

Imagine you have a commissioned a designer to create a company brochure. You just took delivery of the box of newly printed brochures. Do you just stack the box in the office and expect it to work its magic for you?

I hope not! No, you get those brochures immediately out on display. You hand them to your salespeople to give out. You mail them out to clients. They are a  marketing tool. You use them.

The same goes for your website. You need to promote your site by going to popular websites where people are reading and add a link back to your site.

Web Advertising Is Fast Traffic

Banner advertising, Pay per click advertising, sponsorship - all these are traditional means of gaining fast traffic if you are willing to pay for it. The down side of this, as with all paid advertising of this kind, is that once you stop paying, you lose both the link and the traffic.  Social marketing is a better strategy for websites.

What is Social Marketing?

Social and relationship marketing overlap but both have a central theme. A friend may forgive you once for selling to them but rarely stays a friend if all you do is pitch. You have fun with friends, you talk about stuff, its social.

Social networks aim to enable people to interact with each other online. Facebook is a prime example. Invite friends to be "friends" on Facebook and you can see pictures they like to share and be introduced to their friends.

Marketing on these sites is not marketing in many senses but could better be described as the sharing of information. You want to share a cool video and you want to share your companies website. You want to share a rave about a movie you just saw and a piece of industry news that intrigued you.

You don't want to be pushy, venal or driven to make sales. In fact you don't want to be a business person there. No-one cares! They are there to have fun. So where does marketing come into the social scene?

Read  Marketing with Social Media