What is the Value of Social Media....

What is the Value of Facebook and LinkedIn?

When someone asks me this question, internally I tend to sigh deeply and externally smile, you do have to wonder if they are in business whether they deliberately buried their heads against the social media explosion that we are in the midst of. Many people understand the fact that they NEED to be on social networking sites, but are not sure exactly WHY they need to.

SIMPLY GET SOCIAL - these sites are an excellent marketing tool for business, individuals and students. If you are asking this question you are behind the curve so do it now.

Think about the meetings and exhibitions attended globally every day. These networking opportunities are held by associations, professional groups, local chambers of commerce, etc. While sometimes they can be niche and packed with members of your target market, many times they can be sporadic and unfruitful. But you go all the same and come away with new contacts.

Facebook and Linkedin are electronic networking events. The differences is astounding they are running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

The Social Advantage

*Free CRM System for your contacts
*You to choose the EXACT target market you want to engage and connect to
*No costs just time
*Fantastic Free Tools- Events, Announcements.
*Allows you to be flexible!
*Set up, Communicate get started in less than half an hour.

Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to connect with large masses of people including your old friends and professional colleagues, but more importantly they allow you the opportunity to meet and connect with new quality professionals who are willing and able to build your business, purchase your products, learn from your expertise and spread that all too valuable word-of-mouth.

Get Connected
By connecting with people on social networking sites you are enabling a wide group of people to benefit from your area of expertise while engaging them in conversation, asking/answering questions and gathering valuable information to help you market more effectively to your target audience. To be honest, the opportunities, at times, can be endless.

I will talk in detail about Linkedin and Facebook in my next posts, for now get your name, your business website details up there and do some ‘lurking’. (Join us on Linkedin or Facebook)

Linkedin
http://bit.ly/c5F4jq

Facebook
http://bit.ly/cQIp27

And then I get an email for people who get it, with tools that help manage it how can half the business world be in tune and half so not. An email yesterday was from people who get it...
SPROUT Better Manage Your Small Business’s Social Media Presence: http://bit.ly/dfCxQz

Be Authentic http://www.liveensure.com/

'How to achieve excellence in joined-up marketing'

Embracing Social Media in your Promotional Mix.

Savvy businesses understand the power of social media. It can be very challenging to integrate with traditional marketing.Below is a list of which social media tools can be easily integrated, how to use them in an effective way alongside traditional methods and how to prove they're a good investment.

The Marketing Mix has changed Dramatically

Socialmedia: Twitter:The News Feeder/Seeder

Twitter allows direct contact with the audience, in a simple and effective way: messages are limited to140 characters.
Twitter can be used to perpetuate messages/news, create, support competitions to monitor people’s opinions and market activity. It is proven as an effective media to launch a product on the market. There are automatic tools you can use but the business needs to engage with it to make it successful. (Dell. Sun and BestBuy, Liveensure, are excellent examples)But your followers unless you are a full on A lister are unlikely to be interested in the fact you are enjoying a frapocino as starbucks...keep it real, re-tweet your news, research and information.

Facebook and Linkedin

Social media campaign and communities: Linkedin Network/Facebook Fan Page
Facebook is the biggest social network all around the world with more than 28 million active profiles in the UK representing over 70% of the UK community.

LinkedIn has 50 million business users worldwide and is growing at one new member per second ‘Groups’ are a compelling way to communicate to your end users..
Buzz Words: Tribe, lurk and blurt.(I admit to being a bit of a lurker it comes from my heritage in online customer experience and natural female curiosity).

We have formed groups on both:

Facebook Short: http://bit.ly/cQIp27

LinkedIN :Short: http://bit.ly/c5F4jq

Simply link these to your website and add to email signatures, let people share your information and you will increase your digital footprint.

Blogger Outreach
Direct communication with bloggers is a effective way of increasing buzz online. Certain bloggers are considered experts in their sector and “opinion leaders”: they are the ones to activate the word of mouth viral activity getting too the real influencers. In internet security we have the effervescent Graham Cluley. The main objective is to grab their attention and interest and get them to endorse the product/brand. Create a list of key influencers in your sector and start to engage with them, don't sell- cut and paste will not work with these guys).
 
Social Success is Measurable

Marketing Analytics, Measurement, Metrics, Social Media, Twitter
More than ever, hard numbers are necessary to demonstrate success. They are all but incontrovertible and easy to communicate, and they can point out what is or isn't working.

There are some leading players in agencies who can help largers organisations get Social:

• Steve Richards, MD, Yomego - The social media agency, http://www.mysocialmediareputation.com/
• Jam http://www.spreadingjam.com/
• Adam Parker of realwire www.realwire.com/ourStory.asp.

For new-media Twitter, with its established tweetocracy (and people coining phrases with "tweet" left, right, and center), marketers are finding more tools to help them understand how their efforts are performing in this new medium.
There are many free time saving tools to measure the dynamics of activity.

Social Streams

You can very simply activate,monitor and connect:

ActiveTwitter Profiles,
Active Blog Content ,
FACEBOOK Page,
Viral Videos- You Tube,
Case Studies- video and editorial,
Communities,
MEET UP.

Once activated, communicate alongside your usual email and telephone details, let your customers and staff know you are social.

Summary

The good news facebook pages, linkedin communities and blogs are free BUT the challenge is engaging with internal resource to make the strategy work to ensure the messages are consistent in traditonal and social media. For best results a company needs to as a whole get social.

This post is part of the #JUMPchallenge, a blogging competition designed raise awareness on how to join up online and offline marketing, launched to support Econsultancy's JUMP event

Vote for me at http://advice.perkettpr.com/err-on-the-side-of-caution/