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Posts Tagged ‘social networking’
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
LinkedIn has been a little bit of an anomaly among social media networks. It isn’t going after the popular crowd. Rather, it’s focus is on business professionals. Because LinkedIn has focused on the professional crowd, it has grown quite a following among business-minded professionals who want to engage through social media marketing. But the downside is that LinkedIn has not had the innovative technologies that other social networks have come to rely on.
Ah, but that doesn’t mean that LinkedIn isn’t an innovator. They are. And here’s another proof of LinkedIn’s ability to keep up with the times.
Until now, LinkedIn has largely been closed to the Web. You can network with other LinkedIn users, ask and answer questions, send links through private messaging, and engage in many other cool networking activities – all within LinkedIn. But you haven’t really been able to share links with your network from outside of LinkedIn. Now you can.
By dragging and dropping the Share button to your browser toolbar, you can now share any page on the Web with your LinkedIn network of friends and groups. While that isn’t exactly innovation since other social networks have had this capability for quite a while, it is an added value to LinkedIn, which is the premiere social networking website for business professionals. LinkedIn just got a heck of a lot better!
Tags: LinkedIn, sharing, Social Media, social networking
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Networking, online and off line, is a time-honored business practice. Business owners have been engaging others through social networking ever since they’ve been doing business. The only difference has been the strategies employed.
Online, social networking has come to a different age. It’s as much a necessity of doing business as SEO and paid search. But how much time should you spend networking online and where should you go to do it?
Those are perhaps the two most important questions to ask yourself when you embark upon a new strategy for your business. How much time is enough time to network, and where? On the time question, I would say you want to spend a good amount of time networking, but don’t overdo it. Of the time that you spend marketing your business, maybe 30% of that time should be spent networking. That means 30% (or 25%-35%) the time you spend on activities like PPC, SEO, and social media marketing should be spent on networking specifically.
Now, on the where question, that’s a little more difficult to answer. It really depends on your business and who your potential customers are. If you cater to a consumer-oriented crowd that spends time playing Zynga games on Facebook then you should spend time on Facebook. If your audience is on Twitter then be on Twitter. If you cater to businesses or a more professional crowd then spend time on LinkedIn.
It is important to define and narrow your goals for networking when you decide to start your networking plan. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time doing nothing and wasting time.
Tags: facebook, networking, social networking
Posted in Networking for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 18th, 2010
Have you defined your social media marketing funnel? If not, you should.
Like your marketing funnel, your social media marketing funnel defines how you plan to channel your prospects into your sales cycle. The marketing funnel is your overall plan. It covers every aspect of your marketing strategy and how you plan to drive your prospects to the final sale. Your social media marketing funnel is a little more defined, dealing only with your social media marketing plan.
Like a real funnel, your marketing and social media marketing funnels should be wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. That is, you’ll have more prospects at the top of the funnel and fewer at the bottom while those true prospects who are ready to close on the sale right now filter through the funnel completely and into your sales cycle. Here’s an example of a social media marketing funnel at work.
- Social Bookmarking – Used to promote some of social networking and to draw in casual friends and fans to our social networking profiles.
- Facebook, Twitter and Linked – Social media networking profiles with interaction with followers and fans at a superficial level. Little real marketing takes place here. This is just to get the conversation going and develop initial relationships. From here we drive prospects to our blog.
- Forums – Like social networking, we’re driving prospects to our blog and interacting in a more superficial and less direct marketing way.
- Social Bookmarking – Unlike social networking, the object is not necessarily to drive people to the blog. It’s to promote our content, however, we want to drive traffic to our most important content on our blog and static website.
- Blog – With our blog we hope to get a little more intimate with our friends and fans. Here we get into more in-depth discussions about our company and products/services. We are developing deeper relationships with people and interacting on a more personal and professional level. We are not striving to close sales on the blog, although we hope it happens. Our real goal is to drive traffic to our most important sales pages and to get e-mail sign ups for our newsletter and e-mail marketing campaigns.
- E-mail - More personal and a deeper professional connection takes place in our e-mail marketing campaigns. Our subscribers get more special offers and deals than anyone else. In fact, we frequently have exclusive offers just for our e-mail prospects. We use e-mail marketing to drive traffic to our sales pages where we strive for high conversions.
Notice that at each level we are getting deeper personally and professionally. The real marketing takes place at the e-mail level. At the blog level we are marketing but the goal is to drive traffic to the sales pages where the closing takes place – and we want to get people to sign up for our e-mail list where they will really get the best deals. Everything above blogging is designed to drive people into the blog and deeper into our cove.
You probably noticed that social bookmarking is in this funnel twice. That’s because it really does serve more than one purpose. We are trying to get people to our blog and to our social networks, we are also promoting all of our content. It doesn’t really matter which door people walk through as long as they become a customer.
This is just an example of a social media marketing funnel. But I hope it illustrates the importance of your funnel. If you need help designing a social media road map, or funnel, then let us know.
Tags: blog, marketing, social bookmarking, social media marketing, social networking
Posted in Social Media | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
You are likely no stranger to Facebook. Almost everyone uses it these days and the company boasts 150 million users on mobile phones alone. The local Groups feature has been a popular Facebook offering since the beginning of the social service and it allows users to connect with people in their local areas. But Facebook Places takes local social networking a bit further.
Enter real time location-based social networking.
Facebook Places allows you to let your friends know exactly where you are located right now. For instance, you’re sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth and Main. If someone you know is approaching that intersection and sees you sitting there, she could just pop in and say hi. The courtesy of a heads up would be her choice, of course.
The biggest downside seems to be a loss of privacy, but you can change who sees and who can interact with your Facebook Places settings through the service’s privacy settings.
This puts Facebook on the forefront of location-based networking and close to the leading edge on location-based advertising, which is sure to follow. It’s interesting that other location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla see Facebook as friendly to their services rather than a competitor.
(Source) Appearing at Facebook’s announcement, some initial partners, including Foursquare and Gowalla, said they thought Facebook would be an enabler—not a competitor—by introducing a lot of new users to the world of sharing their locations.
Foursquare beat Facebook to the location-based networking space by a year and a half. Gowalla arrived on the scene somewhat earlier but doesn’t have as many users as Foursquare.
Of course, these are not the only location-based networking services online. Facebook Places does have its competition, including Google. Google’s service is called Latitude, which allows you to see where your friends are on Google Maps.
I have a feeling that location-based social networking is just getting started. According to JiWire, more than half of mobile users want to see location-based advertising. That means Facebook Places has a unique opportunity to capitalize and being that Facebook is the most trafficked website online, it has the market clout needed to rival Google in paid advertising services. Places could just be its ticket to the big leagues.
Tags: Facebook Places, social networking
Posted in Display Advertising, Local Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing for Small Business, Social Media | No Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
If you’ve been on Facebook for very long then you’ve likely run across the “pitcher.” She’s the person who has to pitch you on her new and improved product offering, or the old and worn out one that didn’t work last year either.
The Facebook pitch usually comes in two forms and neither one of them is very effective as a sales tool.
- Facebook Pitch #1 – The first kind of Facebook pitch is the one that takes place in public. You write on someone’s wall something like, “Come to my website and see the wonderful new fastastic widgetizer in four different colors!” and then you graciously provide a link. If you’ve done this then you’ve likely discovered that it doesn’t work. About the only thing it manages to do is annoy people and you probably will end up losing connections, which is sad because for every friend you lose you also lose access to their entire network of friends.
- Facebook Pitch #2 – The second kind of Facebook pitch is less public, but it’s not any less annoying. You become friends with someone and then start sending them Facebook messages with offers like “Thanks for being my friend on Facebook. Try out my new widgetizer – it’s free.” Then you provide that wonderful link of yours. Again, Facebookers find this practice annoying and if you send out regular Facebook messages to your friends with those kinds of offers in them you can expect to start losing friends fast.
You will see yourself a lot more successful on Facebook if you just pretend you’re at some big party and just socialize. That’s why they call it a social network. The goal really is to socialize and network. If you do that well, you’ll likely manage to snag a few customers along the way.
Tags: facebook, social networking
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
If you knew that Facebook is the No. 1 social networking site in the U.S., congratulations. But did you know that Twitter is No.3? And can you guess which site sits at No. 2?
No, it’s not YouTube. And it’s not LinkedIn. Try again.
MySpace.
Yes, that MySpace. And you thought that site was history.
Take a look at the World Map Of Social Networks for 2010 and you’ll see the results. Around the world, Facebook is weighing in as the No. 1 social network. Twitter is either at No. 2 or No. 3 in most countries. But MySpace is in the top 3 only in 4 countries and at No. 2 only in 1 – the U.S. It is no at No. 1 anywhere.
Where else is MySpace popular? Australia, Germany and Italy.
Honestly, though, I think MySpace is on the way out. I think Twitter will make major moves this year and next and other social networking sites like LinkedIn will as well.
What do you think? Will MySpace stay in the top 3 social networking sites in Germany, Australia, Italy and the U.S.?
Tags: social networking, U.S.
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
If you’ve been watching Facebook over the years then you know it grew from relative obscurity to the second most trafficked site on the Internet. It didn’t happen overnight.
From its childhood years when it was only the province of college students keeping up with each other to today when it enjoys being a business haven, Facebook has grown into one of the most popular sites by offering a way to connect and network with like-minded people. Social networking has come of age.
I think it’s just a matter of time before Facebook overcomes Google as the Internet’s most used site. It could happen. And if you haven’t started using the site yourself for some business networking then you are behind the curve. Facebook is soon to do something powerful and it’s going to shock the world. I’m watching, are you?
Tags: business, facebook, social networking
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
If you read my blog enough you’ll soon find out that I’m a huge, huge fan of social networking. I believe in it. Especially for small business owners. Social networking is tremendous way to stay on top of your niche and to build connections. But there is a time for taking a break.
Just as anything else in life, you’ve got to know when to walk away. Sometimes, a planned break can energize you and you’ll come back stronger and ready to run some more. That’s true in business, in relationships, and in a lot of things. Including social networking.
But how much time should you take off and when?
There’s no easy answer to that question. You’ve got to do what is right for you. Obviously, special holidays are a good day to take off – Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, or a religious holy day. But for how long?
I wouldn’t stay gone too long. Taking an entire month off from social networking might cause you to lose your momentum. But a week here and there is OK. Even a day a fine and can give you the energy you need to recharge your mental and physical batteries. But if you do take off try to find someone who can fill your shoes while you are gone. It needs to be someone who knows you and can reflect your opinions or represent your business well.
By having someone fill in for you on your preferred social networks, you can still keep your business name and interests in front of your core audience. But you might want to disclose the fact that you are leaving your social life in someone else’s hands. People will notice the difference and your honesty and forthrightness will be held respectable. Take a break, but not too long.
Tags: small business, social networking, taking a break
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Deloitte conducted a survey that shows people are more influenced to buy a product by online consumer reviews of the product rather than direct advertising. That’s not really news, but it does indicate that consumer review sites are pretty valuable. If you can manage to have a few of your satisfied customers go to a site like, say, Yelp and review your business and its products or services then that would go much further than you spending money on display advertising online.
The survey also indicates that people are socializing more online, watching more TV than they did last year, and really want to connect their TV to the Internet. So what does that say?
I think it says that TV isn’t going anywhere. In fact, people are more influenced by TV advertising than they are Internet advertising. And if people are spending time socializing online then you can bet they are talking to their friends. So if you can find a way to get your influence into the social media circles that your potential customers are running in, that would be quite influential. What do you think?
Tags: online advertising, online consumer reviews, social networking, TV
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 9 Comments »
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