There’s a huge rush on - from marketers around the globe - to market their products and services (or increase their search engine position) by posting content and creating profiles on multiple Web 2.0 properties.

This is one way a very smart internet marketing trainer is teaching others to domninate the search engine listings for their select keywords.

It’s a great idea, but is it a viable long-term solution to increasing brand awareness and building business value? Or is it a short term solution to (hopefully) some fast cash?

Surfers Spending More Hours on Web 2.0 - Less on Search

Before you run off creating multiple accounts on multiple Web 2.0 properties and posting your proprietary content there in an attempt to dominate the top 10 results in google, consider Read the rest of this entry »

This list of links and pages is a work in progress. A consistently updated list of social networks to position yourself on, each linking to further information on the Web 2.0 sites.

Feel free to comment on or add to this list (on this page). More specific (site-related) social networking information should be left in comments at each link.

I am only including the top social networks in this list - for both broad and niche markets (and generally those that also pass page rank back to your website). In later posts I will cover secondary Web 2.0 enabled properties.

43things
BlackPlanet
BeBo
BlueDot
Broadcaster
Bolt
CarDomain
Care2
Classmates
Read the rest of this entry »

Social marketing removes the barriers that marketers and sales people have been actively addressing since the beginning of time.

As a marketer I am certain you have heard that the average customer requires 7 exposures to your product before they begin to consider the purchase. As such social marketing is an excellent vehicle to facilitate that repetition of exposure - through friends’ conversations, through sharing resource links, and through ‘layered’ trust.

I was reading a supplementary report today about Social Marketing (this one from the purists). You likely don’t need it, but you can pick up your own copy free at Turning Point (from the Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative).

To be clear, if you’re an online marketer or entrepreneur you might not know what I mean by ‘purist’ so allow me to explain. The purists state they coined the phrase social marketing and as such they own it. Their focus is marketing (online or off) to facilitate public health awareness and change.

An example may be anit-smoking campaigns. For years in North America it was cool to smoke. Eventually doctors, grandmothers, politicians, and other influencers told the world that it was bad for us, but it was only after years of educating the population of the dangers, celebrities and other role models spoke out, advertising and other media was ‘corrected’, that smoking became absolutely ‘not cool’. For examples of using social marketing for health, follow along at americanlegacy.org

Back to the report I was reading…

Three Basic Social Marketing Concepts

It’s clearly stated (and I agree) that you don’t have to be some marketing genius to succeed with social marketing. There are three basic concepts, principles and exercises to engage in, study, and understand.

1. The first is to know your audience (we all know this right?).
2. The second is to take action (make a declaration, take a stance).
3. The third is to engage (in conversation).

Four P’s of Marketing

While working you will want to consider the four P’s of marketing (also ‘basics’). Product, Price, Place and Promotion. In the case of social marketing these four P’s are expanded in their meanings.

1. Product does not have to be ‘buy my product’ in the case of social marketing. It could be a desired outcome such as bookmark my page, sign up for my newsletter, etc.
2. Price does not have to be in US dollars. Price can be measured as any investment - financial, time, emotional.
3. Place becomes virtual.
4. And promotion becomes any channel used to reach your target audience.

Seven Questions to Create Your Social Marketing Strategy

Defining, designing and deploying your social marketing strategy begins with a series of questions. Of course the questions vary given the desired outcome and target market, but here’s a list to get you started.

1. What is the desired outcome of my social marketing campaign?

2. Who am I trying to reach? Who is my target audience?

3. How open are they to my message?

4. How long to gain the trust of my audience? What proof is required?

5. Who are they currently following/listening to/trusting?

6. Where do they engage in conversations?

7. What action(s) will I need to employ (7 interactions or exposures).

Six Phases of Social Marketing

TurningPoint describes social marketing as a 6 phase system, (1) describe the problem, (2) conduct market research, (3) create the marketing strategy, (4) plan the intervention, (5) monitor and evaluate, (6) implement and evaluate.

These points (phases) are an essential message to all entrepreneurs learning to market products and services online. It is no longer enough to simply create a website and throw some advertising at it, hoping it will take off. There is planning, research, strategizing, work and evaluation involved in true marketing.

What’s the point?

Do your homework, research your market, and write your plan before you engage in strategic social marketing activities - otherwise you may just be wasting time and energy clicking around the internet with nothing to show for your efforts.

Until next post,

Laura Childs

In a continuation to an earlier post, these two brief points explore some of the ways to ‘handle yourself’ on social networking websites.

Neither of these are one-size-fits-all recommendations - each technique for marketing off-site will vary with the ‘flavor’ of each site.

Spend a few hours on any site before you create a profile, becoming familiar with how others are posting, linking out to, or sharing resources. And always read a website’s terms of use before investing your energy into adding content, creating a profile, or building a network.

Don’t Directly Sell or Market Your Wares

On social networking (web 2.0 enabled) sites it is far better to educate, assist or mentor others than it is to blatently sell or transparently market your affiliate links and products.

Social networking is not about hype and prosper it is about honest communication and connections. Position yourself as an expert or trusted friend first and only then can you share opinions that will foster trust, eventually leading to customer relationships.

Contracting the Social Work Out

Although I have taken on a few corporate contracts for increasing the brand worth of companies on Web 2.0 social networking sites, this is nothing that the small business owner can’t do themselves in just a few minutes per day.

The ‘trick’ is to be smart about it - by chosing the most worthwhile site (sites that are both high-traffic and appealing to your market, and perhaps even pass page rank) to network on.

Be yourself, let your personality and knowledge shine! This is all about real people connecting with each other - not corporate constraints and profiling.

I haven’t been writing much publicly lately - that doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking off completely though!

Although I haven’t been at the computer screen, I have been writing. A lovely thing to be able to research a company and write a battle plan at the beach with the kids. There are a few corporates I’m engaged with at present (even though I swore I was done with large companies). These ones are innovative though, willing to work with me on my terms and making the effort to ‘get’ online social marketing.

While I consult and draft their strategies a few points came to mind that I want to share with you. There’s more coming from my notes, but today I want to talk about making the decision to partake in Web 2.0 marketing and pre-campaign tasks.

Is a social marketing strategy imperative for every business?

Perhaps not, but social marketing will affect every business at some point in time. (HINT: If you’re not talking about yourself, someone else is, or will be, guaranteed!) Read the rest of this entry »