Social Media Marketing Considerations

I may be dating myself, but remember the shampoo product commercial that claimed their product was so good that each person that used it would tell two friends, and then they would tell two friends, and so on, and so on? This commercial was a good example of how word of mouth travels. With social media marketing, basically a company can utilize word of mouth digitally, but here are some things to consider:

• Human Capital - Who will create, update, promote, participate in the conversation to gain followers, friends, fans and keep things relevant for them to return?
• Time - The conversation never stops.
• Complexity - A company can build profiles on each social network to represent their brand, but if no one is coming in (or venturing out) to participate then it isn't doing much good.
• Your Target - Internal (employees), external (prospective and current consumers), or both. If the intent of the social networking profile is to be a place the for exchange, distribution, conversation, feedback about a promotion with internal staff then it is limited to just that. On the other hand, if a profile only has coworkers visiting and exchanging promotional messages to each other, those messages aren't reaching the eyes of the prospective or current consumers. This reminds me of the saying, preaching to the choir.
• Building a BUZZ - is what participants do when they include links (aka "link juice") back to your site in a digg, tweet, blog entry, pulse stream and status update. Good "link juice" can help your organic ranking, like an endorsement.
• ME, ME, ME - if the conversation is one sided, frequent, and not interesting then it will not be as successful as an interactive, interesting, and relevant one.

Successful Social Media Marketing can be a lot of work, but inbound linking is the digital "word of mouth" way for one person that finds something good to share with two friends, who tell two more friends, and so on and so on...

All ThinkBIGsites SEO Packages include a strategic inbound linking campaign utilizing professionally written industry blogs with a page rank of 3 or higher and social networking site profiles to build a buzz about your business which contributes to our success in achieving page 1 rankings for 95% of our clients in 90 days. Contact me now to get your "link juice" flowing!

The Cost of Complacency

I understand and respect the process of due diligence when outsourcing projects, such as internet marketing; however, once the process is complete and the decision is made complacency with that decision is nothing short of costly neglect. It is in the best interest of a company to review the performance of the company that they have outsourced to. Not just a measurement of performance to the previous year internally, but a measurement to an external standard of peers and/or industry average. Show me a company that tolerates complacency and I'll show you a company that isn't getting the biggest bang for their buck.

If I seem a little fired up, I am. Here is why... today while cold calling a business with a website not highly ranked in search engine results and basically off the radar. I asked to speak with the person in charge of internet marketing. The receptionist informed me of the marketing company that handles their internet marketing. When I asked to speak with the person who made the decision to outsource the work to the company, she hung up on me. Instead of moving on to the next company, it put a fire in my belly that this company was obviously not performing well in search results and what a difference my services could make for them. So, I did a little research to find out that their website was grading out as an F, as in "Failure" to be optimized for the search engines in order to rank them highly. I called a direct line to the company, but when I insisted on speaking to the person internally was told that I could only leave a message, and not a voicemail either. My gut tells me that even the phone is answered by a company outsourced to do so. So basically, this company is paying another company to FAIL at delivering them a high organic ranking and on top of this, is paying another company to answer the phone and hang up on anyone that tries to get in contact with anyone internally to let them know. I doubt this company has money to burn. I have this image in my head of someone in a fire safe office with the entire building around them burning to the ground and they don't even know it. Or at least I thought that was a better image than a person with their head up their own... well, you know. And isn't that really what complacency is? Comfortable while being oblivious to one's surroundings. At what point does the cost of complacency appear if no one is looking? Well, I'm looking because I'm not comfortable being complacent and I actually care about my clients success. AND, it is in my nature to be of service and to help people succeed. Here I am standing with the hose pointed at the building burning down to save it, but the switch to turn the water on for the hose is located in the same fireproof office as the one person is that I can't reach.