While most clients agree that SEO is something they should invest in, there are times when understanding SEO’s worth in terms of dollars and cents are difficult.
Reactorr has created SEO ROI calculator to determine the potential value of ranking between positions one and ten, depending on the value of a sale, and the conversion.
Tags: roi, SEOUsing social media tools can allow a business to connect and create conversations with their clients. Savvy companies have picked up on the opportunities and are already engaged. Throughout the customer life cycle a company can educate, support, pitch, introduce and more.
Social media is about conntecting people. Integratration of social media into your marketing strategy is no longer a question if whether if you should, but how you plan to do so. The possibilities are numerous, and your customers will show their appreciation through shorter sales cyles and increased business.
Usually customers are using social media tools before the companies are, so its important to participate, but also understand that you’re not in charge. Simply put, either let go or lose control.
Where does one start? Does your company have a blog? Depending on the nature of your business, you might have several experts within your company and want to have multiple blogs. If you have more than one division or product line you might be a candidate for multiple blogs. Maybe your engineers are working on different aspects of the business that justify multiple blogs? An example of a company with multiple blogs is GMblogs which discusses everything from new products to events. This approach caters to specific interests and makes the blogs more interesting to read than lumping all related aut content into one blog.
Dell is another example, with 10 internal blogs and over 20 Twitter accounts, they’re maintaining relations and communication with consumers on a few levels. If your business can be segmented, without becoming overly fragmented, multiple blogs might be an option for you too.
In other cases, it can make sense to run forums. This is more of a direct conversation with your audience and can require a higher degree of maintenance. As would creating your own social network. But the return on a successfully create forum or social network provides a direction line of communication with your customer. Be forewarned that creating and maintaining a forum or social network is a demanding endeavour.
By personalizing the customer experience through interaction you involve your customers and give your company a face at the same time. And advantage of having multiple blogs is, when applicable, you’re delivering a more targeted message to the readers. It’s important to keep in mind not to be overly commercial in your conversation, yet still mention informative news. Being informative and resourceful is going to add stickiness and interest to your message, as opposed to using it as an advertising channel.
Studies now show that as much as 60% of consumers find advertising unappealing or irrelevant. We’re no longer living in a society where media can push messages at consumers. They’ll find what they want, when they want. Your brand can be part of that.
Another great example is when P&G developed beinggirl.com to put themselves at the center of the conversation. While its cheaper to sponsor a site than create and support one, the control and equity built are incomparable. The community P&G built surrounds issues of the target market and hold their attention. Building a community isn’t for everyone, it can depend on your audience and topic. In the case of beinggirl the consumer is higher to participate and join in the conversation, and they would be at the beginning of the sales cycle. Determining their lifetime value it made sense to create the community. This chart from BusinessWeek illustrates contributors by age.
Examples cited might be Fortune 1000, the message is still the same. Brand awareness is more than advertising. Maintaining that top of mind awareness is no longer about repetition. We know that hasn’t worked for some time and consumers are tuning us out the message. Products and services of value are about making life easier, so it stands to reason the message ought to be following the same format. Provide value in your communications and consumers will notice, preach to them and you risk losing them.
Although mentioned previously, it’s worth restating; you can either be part of the conversation or watch the opportunities to speak with your customers pass you by.
Microblogging has been used in the US for reporting the progress of natural disasters, but in other countries where violence is more common its been used for monitoring incidents. There’s a new platform being deployed in Africa called Ushahidi being tested, and with cell phones being used by contributors to update the microblogging platform, its able to provide updates better than a news team.
Social strategy and branding – it’s like ham and eggs, peanut butter and jam, or insert your favorite combo here. The point being, marketing your product or service needs to include some form of social media component.
The web is listenening, and so are your customers. If you don’t join the conversation the blanks will be filled. Wouldn’t you rather be part of that conversation than allowing others to monopolize it? Afterall, if you’re not fully engaged with the conversation of your brand, you’re missing out on marketing opportunities.
It’s easy to understand that social media might be overwhelming, but you don’t have to do it all. When it comes to social media and brand management, you want to monitor the conversation. It would be virtually impossible to include yourself in every social media tool available, but monitoring your brand is a very important part of managing its perception. It’s like a form of proactive customer service.
The Social Media Conversation Prism is about enhancing a community, preferably centered around you and/or your brand. This is where it becomes important to monitor and manage. But its not really something that you “manage” per se, it’s more about being woven into the fabric of the conversation as opposed to arriving later. The conversation is going to happen regardless. You can be part of it and build relations, or ignore it and hope for the best. Which do you think is going to work for you?
As you can see from the above sample, which doesn’t represent the entire social media spectrum, there are a number of places your brand’s voice can be. While each voice is different, there’s a need to be selective in where you’re active.
Your audience will tend to communicate in a variey of different places. Social media isn’t just about user-generated content, it’s much more than that. Marketers now have a unique opportunity to talk to, not at consumers. That’s what advertising was about, and we know how well that works these days.
Look forward to an upcoming post about tools for social media soon.
A revised version of the video Globalization and the Information Age.
It’s filled with fascinating trivia about the times we live in…
If MySpace were a country, it would be the 5th largest in the world.
There are 31 billion searches on Google every day.
Created by Karl Fisch. Modified by Scott McLeod.
