Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [225]
This is the power of Twitter; it is an immediate medium. Twitter trends rise quickly and then tail off after a number of hours or sometimes days. Twitter is a medium that focuses on the immediacy of information. Twitter tends to be more of an in-the-moment medium than, for instance, Facebook; it allows insight into what many users are thinking and their immediate frustrations with their computer, from which they are accessing Twitter. Dell found a way to tap into the immediate frustrations of users and estimated that millions of dollars of sales came from using this new medium to reach customers.
In a 2009 Reuters article (no longer available online) about Dell’s adoption of Twitter, Dell made more than $3 million from Twitter followers who clicked links in tweets and more than $1 million in the six months prior to the article. You can find the case study on Twitter at https://twitter.com/twitter101/case_dell.
Branch Out to Additional Media
Once you’re well established in one medium and you’re having success with it, you might consider integrating other forms of social media into your marketing strategy. Just like when focusing on a single medium, the specifics of your business and clientele determine the social-media options that are right for you.
Do your customers have a strong sense of community and sharing? Then Facebook and most likely a blog would be good options for building a community. In fact, developing a discussion forum that rewards the community for their involvement and ideas might be a good move that would make your business look very good and also provide great research benefits for customer research.
Suppose your business develops custom car accessories; a combination of Facebook, a blog, and media sharing could be the best way to cultivate an audience and develop relationships. In that type of industry, customers love to show off their cars and their creations, so a visual aspect is critical. The ability for your customers to showcase their own photos and video would be important as well. This can be done within Facebook or by creating a Flickr group for your business and customers. Giving customers the ability to feel a sense of belonging and the ability to contribute will grow the relationship.
Developing a company blog that showcases the ability to develop those custom accessories would be an effective way to build additional search engine rankings for specialized terms. Integrating videos that are hosted at YouTube that showcase the equipment that is at the shop will give the potential customers or prospects an inside look at your business and the quality of work. The blog can also showcase new creations and show some of the processes that went into creating the custom parts and the final result.
Thursday: Assess Your Resources
Attempting to blast your way into all of the available social-media opportunities will lead to quick burnout from making undirected efforts across numerous channels. All the while, important business issues are neglected and sometimes left behind, because the demands (sometimes self-imposed) of keeping up with social media can stretch the business on a budget or with limited resources in both time and employees.
Much of today’s content is about deciding what social media you should use based on various factors of your business, whereas yesterday’s focused on the nuances of each medium. The factors between these two sections should help you find the right medium for your message.
Personnel
If you are running your business all alone, then time is a big consideration. Your efforts will have to be managed and practical. Conversely, if you work with a team of people, then you have more time and specialties to use in your marketing. Either way, you have to build your social-media marketing in a way that