All too often business owners shun social media because they don't fully understand the value. e-Merge Online Marketing believes there are two sides to a social media presence, the community or conversational side and the SEO traffic you achieve from the additional links, and intentional traffic being driven to the website.
Ride the Storm: Navigating Through Unstable Periods / Katerina Rudko (Belka G...
2 Faces of Social Media
1. The Two Faces of
Social Media
Dick Fisher,
e-Merge Online Marketing
2. Who Are We
e-Merge Online Marketing provides cost-effective
solutions to businesses looking to enter into, or
supplement their existing social media marketing
efforts.
Social Media Management | Social Media Consulting
Social Media Training
5. • It’s NOT LinkedIn,Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, etc
• Sites are the tools that facilitate online conversations
• People join the sites to share opinions, perceptions, and
experiences
• These conversations are the real definition of social media
• Allows your company to personality, gain trust and
participate
So What Is It Anyhow?
10. • If you build it, they will NOT come!
• Keywords
• Link Farms
• Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO
• Linking from social networks and social review sites
are gaining significant importance
The Web Then and Now
12. • Failure to plan - no strategy
• Built the structure but not using it
• Impatient
• Single threaded
• Don’t understand or look at the ROI
• Not engaging
Top Business Mistakes
13. • What does your overall online marketing strategy look
like
• How does or could social media play into that strategy
• Has analytics code been installed on your website
• Do you know what performance you are getting from
your website
• Who has primary responsibility for your online
marketing strategy
Take Aways
Many business executives believe that spending any amount of time on things like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest is a waste of time. The reality is that over the past five years, social media has grown from a platform of skepticism by brands to an essential tactic of marketing plans. Something to consider ... A handful of years ago, most advertising included directing to a company website. Today people are being directed to the social media networks. Why is that?
e-Merge Online Marketing provides cost-effective solutions to businesses looking to enter into, or supplement their existing social media marketing. We understand that combining business goals with our experience and training in developing social media marketing and online marketing strategies is the key to delivering optimal results. We understand there are countless things that demand your attention making it hard to do anything other than run your business. We also understand what it ’s like to try to do everything with limited resources. e-Merge Online Marketing was founded on the belief that providing professional and affordable social media services, along with online marketing consulting would help businesses achieve their online marketing goals. We work with our clients face-to-face to build trust and define a strategy that will help them achieve an effective online presence. We believe every business is unique and therefore provide in-person consultation and analysis to bring a customized solution to the table. By defining and understanding your business ’ goals, you can focus your resources doing what you do best - running your business. We can do what we do best - expand your business. Social Media Management | Social Media Consulting | Social Media Training | Online Marketing Consulting
Topics covered in this presentation: The face you see (social networks) which is the interactive side of social media. The face you don ’ t see or the secondary or quiet benefits to having a social media presence. And a couple big mistakes businesses make when it comes to using or adopting social media into their marketing strategy.
Generally when we mention “ Social Media ” , the response is Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and the like.
When people think about social media, things that come to mind are Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google +, Pinterest or hundreds of other similar sites. These sites are not social media, they are the tools that allow for social media to happen. These tools work independently or in conjunction with each other to facilitate online conversations. These conversations are taking place on the internet where people are coming together to share their opinions, perceptions, and experiences about all sorts of topics. These online conversations are really the overarching concept of social media. So put simply, social media marketing is the way for your company to put some personality behind it to become engaged in these online communities and participate in these online conversations.
One of the reasons social media is so important is depicted by this chart The Nielsen Company published back in 2009 that indicates the level of trust in these forms of advertising. Note that “ Recommendations from people known ” has the highest level of trust of any form of advertising. So people are trusting what other people are saying online more than what you are saying about yourself on your website, advertising, marketing materials, etc. This is not to say these other forms of advertising are not equally important but simply put, and following trends, this is where the majority of the people sit when it comes to the degree of trust they have in marketing and advertising.
Ultimately, people are the foundation of every company ’ s marketing strategy. What social media allows us to do is build that foundation on the people that are your customers who know you best. It lets us identify those customers who are moving into that realm of endorser because they are happy with your products or services and we are able to leverage moving them into the realm of being an evangelist. The is the golden ticket in terms of social media - the understanding of how to take that customer relationship and push it from pure customer to being an evangelist - taking what they have to say about you and spread it to their online connections.
In traditional marketing, there is a common term called “ funneling ” to describe the way marketing professionals attract new prospects and convert them into customers. More time was spent on finding prospects, converting them into customers that there was in retaining those hard-earned customers, primarily because historically the best you could wish for was to provide a great customer experience and simply hose they would come back to buy more - and better yet bring their friends with them. With social media marketing, we flip the funnel because we know know that recognizing your existing customers are your best asset. By using social media technologies, you can reach out to your exiting customers to remind them to come back, make word of mouth recommendations and ask them to share your content and their experience with you to their friends and families.
The silent benefit of social media can be the significant Increase in website traffic, branding, visibility, site ranking, but by far, the biggest benefit is SEO.
When the web started out, people thought all they had to do was build a website and people would find it. Strategy worked well for the first couple hundred websites on the internet. Today, there are some 14 billion webpages out there - All vying for the first 10-20 spots on the search engine results page. Keywords became popular in the late 90s - keyword stuffing became the problem Early 2000 ’ s we saw link farming become the standard - that tactic was short-lived Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO battle ensued for the next several years 2012 Google determined that links to a website from social networks and social review sites were going to get the gain because of their ability to provide more permission and promote context
Some of the top business mistakes made with social media
Many businesses go into online marketing / social media marketing with no strategy. Planning is important because it allows you to establish the goals of a program, determine who and where your audience is, find out where they hang out, grow your audience, what types / frequency / times of day / days of week to created a balanced mix of messages, measurement and start over. Establishing a presence on social networking sites alone will not achieve success. Many social networking sites are built and left with nothing else - no fans, friends, followers, connections or interaction leaving the business to wonder why social media does not work for them. Many people don ’ t understand social media is not like filling the ice cube trays with water then wondering why there is no ice after 30 minutes. It takes time to gain the trust, credibility and break down the barriers people have when they see a business in the middle of the conversation. Showing your personality, style, customer service, etc. takes time. Social media is a marathon, not a sprint. There are a number of businesses who simply hand over the creation of various social network sites to a single individual (either inside or outside the company). They generally hold the keys to the kingdom for their online presence. ROI is an equation. R = what do you want or expect to get for the I = what you invest (money or time). When it comes to social media, the R is directly related to the goals. Are you looking for sales, leads, traffic, branding, visibility? Establish goals, develop a strong plan or strategy and then determine whether social media is truly beneficial. Failure to be engaged in the conversation negates the purpose of having a social media presence. If you are not going to be involved in the conversation, don ’ t get into social media.
