Social Media: Time to Join the Party

Posted on 12. Aug, 2009 by gernotk in Social Media Campaigns, What's New

Why Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and others have become the essential, and ultimately most relevant, marketing platform.

There should be no need to define Social Media. It’s difficult to find anyone who is NOT on Facebook or MySpace, or watched a video on You Tube. If you have internet access, you should know social media. If you do not have a Facebook page, I’m hoping you at least know what it is (or you wouldn’t be reading this article).

There is no doubting the prolific use and importance of Social Media today. Just to put a few things in perspective, here are some stats:

Facebook just surpassed 225 million members in April of 2009. (If Facebook were a country, it would be the 8th most populated in the world).
MySpace is in the neighborhood of 55 million members.
YouTube has around 70 million unique visits per month.
Twitter is estimated to have over 10 million users (and growing).

This is not mentioning the recent up-swing of Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and the professional channel of LinkedIn.

Now we all know how big Social Media is today, and it’s great for staying in contact with friends and family. But what is Social Media Marketing? And how can Facebook & YouTube help your business?

In its most basic definition, Social Media Marketing is the promotion of your business through online media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, etc. We are not talking about paying for advertising on these channels. When Social Media is utilized to its full potential, you can generate a dynamic marketing campaign at a very cost-effective rate. I’m sure you have already posted a few comments to your friends about your business and to “please refer anyone that might be interested” in your services or products. This is a basic form of advertising, and can be somewhat effective given the volume of your connections.

Of course, notifying your friends is not a lasting marketing tactic to keep you in business. So you then look at traditional advertising such as newspaper ads, direct mail campaigns, maybe even a radio or TV spot. For most small & medium sized businesses, these forms of traditional advertising provide too little return of their investment. Every day we hear of another newspaper that has stopped publishing, E-mail marketing and AdWords are replacing direct mail, and television spots are not as effective as they used to be to reach your audience. This is not to mention the high expense to launch such campaigns.

In this age of business, everything goes through your website. If a customer cannot find you on the web, they will not find you at all. When in need of the services or products that your business provides, a potential customer will usually conduct a search on Google (or other search engines). And if your website is not on the first page of results you have just lost that lead. On a web search, the organic ranking of your website is in direct relation to the relevance and respectability of your business. Think about it this way: You wouldn’t click through 4-5 pages on a Google search to find what you need, would you? If the first few options show you what you are looking for, and those businesses have several customers to vouch for their services, you are more likely to trust them as well. So you give them a call and give them your business.

So here is the million dollar question:

How can I effectively launch a Social Media Marketing campaign that will provide me with recommendations from customers, turn fans into brand ambassadors and get my website to the top of the search results?

This is where Lavalobe comes in. But before I explain how we can help, let’s first look at how search engines, like Google, work:

Google Bots (that’s what Google calls programs that continuously search the web for new and updated websites) search each website for relevant keywords, meta-tags and dynamic linking, within itself, as well as incoming and outgoing links. The name of a page, the headline and the content all play crucial factors in determining a website’s relevance. With the growth of Social Media, Google also pays more and more attention to those platforms, to continuously evaluate if the information is indeed what people are searching for on Google.com.

So, if you are spending your entire marketing budget only on traditional advertising and are not seeing the results you want, it’s no surprise. I’m not saying that you are throwing your money away, but it is more important than ever to spread your core value proposition through as many channels as possible, and that should actually start with, and not just include, social media and a website.

How Lavalobe will work for your business: our process.

Evaluate your current marketing efforts and position in the online space
Research your particular space and immediate competition. What works and what doesn’t work

At Lavalobe we partner with our clients to create and execute Social Media campaigns to drive relevant traffic to your website. We work with you to create the content for a Facebook page dedicated to your business, post updates, promotions & discounts, Twitter feeds, and You Tube videos to generate more buzz about your business. And generally, it all starts with a brand-new search engine optimized website that becomes the hub for all your social media campaigns. As we execute your campaign, we will show you summarized monthly performance results that outlines pageviews, social engagements, and interactions with media. This allows you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, and know exactly who is looking at your business - whether they contact you or not. When executed correctly, you will see your organic page ranking rapidly climb to the top. This ultimately drives more traffic to your website, establishes you/your business as a trustworthy resource, and you generate more business.

The more people know about your business, the more they will talk about it, buy from you, and then refer your business to others. It’s your original advertising tactic of “word of mouth,” it’s just potentially millions of mouths! And Lavalobe makes sure that it’s as easy as possible to share information.

The other great feature is how cost-effective a Social Media Marketing campaign can be. An average advertising campaign that includes print ads, mail ads, website, and online ad words (not including radio & TV) will cost around 5 times more per customer than a Social Media Marketing campaign. And your results are now measureable!

Social Media Marketing has already taken flight, but it is just beginning to climb. Research has shown that social media marketing is expecting a huge increase in 2009 – 2010 (according to Forrester Research). I said it before and I’ll say it again: traditional advertising is dead (or at least slowly dying). If you are not prepared for marketing in the 21st century, then you need to call us today. As long as your website is sitting in the distant pages of an online search, you are losing valuable business. The sooner you get started on a Social Media Marketing campaign, the sooner you will see your company at the top of the page. You will not believe how quickly your client base will grow!

We want to help! Social Media has changed the way we communicate, network, and conduct business. This is the New Media era and we are the New Media Agency. Stop your traditional advertising campaign, and call Lavalobe today.

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