Dos or Don’ts in Social Media for Business Promotions

The number of user and daily traffic of all social media has given an opportunity to companies for business promotion. People in social media are sharing and discussing about movies, restaurant, brand, Services etc.

There are lots of advantages of Social Media websites which make them better place than other medium. But social media is different from other advertising medium. You can’t apply here all the business tactics of TV and print media. Here we have discussed some of the important do and do not points in social media for business promotion.

Let’s start with the Do’s in social media.

1. 

This is the first rule in social Media, More you will give, more you will get. It can be in the form of quizzes, gift, information, discounts, mega events etc.  Also it is the best way to keep engaging your visitors and customers.

2. 

More you will be active in social media, more visitors and customers you will attract. Keep updating about your Page if you are in Facebook or keep twitting if you are in Twitter.

 

3. 

Give the response to every comments and questions. Most important thing is listening to your visitors or customers.  Listen their complaints, try to solve their problem or try to give solution of problem.

4. 

Participate in the every activity; share your opinion on visitor’s comments.  Try to involve yourself with your customers and visitors. More you will participate between your visitors, more you will win their trust.

5. 

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Be open in social media, give authority to your visitors for photos, videos posting. Try to make yourself open in social media. People can easily associate their self with your brand or business.

6. 

Social media is about sharing and updating.  Whether it may be Facebook, Twitter, Digg or any social media web sites it requires updating from your side. You can start a topic, discussion on social media.

7. 

Social media offers the various types of application for the development of your page or profile.  There are different types of applications for different types of businesses. By using these applications you can optimize your page for your customers or visitors.

8. 

Last but not the least, one of the most important Do’s in social media. In information section give the all detail of your business and service with necessary URL back to your website. If you don’t have website, don’t forget to give the phone numbers and complete address of your offices or stores.

These tips should help you go a long way in in achieving your desired social media goals.

Now let’s discuss about Don’ts in Social Media. You need to pay a lot of attention here, since these points can adversely affect your social media campaign or presence.

1. 

One common mistake that companies made in social media is that they forget about their visitors and customers. And keeping highlighting or talking about their brand or business. All this is going to annoy your visitors.

2. 

Yes its true, never be late in giving the response, and never be late in reply or giving answer. If someone posts a comment asking for some information, it may even be your customer airing this grouse – try to reply to that as soon as possible. A delayed reply is not going to do any good to build a healthy relationship with your customers.

3.

You need to be specific, don’t try to put everything about your business, products or services in social media profile. It will be better to create separate profile or accounts for different services.

4.

Too much content about any product or information can irritate your user. Try to write down short and stick content about your business and services with necessary hyper text or URL links.

5. 

In social media don’t expect for quick results. Patience is key in social media. It can happen that initially you will not get good response from visitors.  And all this can lead to frustration. Social media is about continuous effort and regular updating.

6. 

Don’t try to ignore the criticism about your services or products. Listen what people are saying about your brand or services.  Take it as opportunity and try to solve the related issue.

7. 

In social media you should be consistent, consistency is key in social media. Keep updating yourself regularly in social media.

Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR, interviews Amber Naslund, Director of Community, Radian6, about why it is important for small businesses to be using social media tools. Amber says the cost of social media tools is relatively low and using social media is a great way to connect with smaller communities. Amber discusses how small businesses can identify which tools are right for them, how to monitor their reputation, and how to socialize the existing content already on their website. Amber also discusses Radian6, a social media monitoring platform and Web-based service.
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Importance of Social Media in Business

If you have not started using social media as a marketing strategy in your business than you are wasting a valuable resource that could easily bring you new clients and customers. Not only will it get you new leads, but these leads are better than others that you may find or buy. Leads you obtain from social media are good because they already trust you and are ready to do business with you. As a marketing strategy, social media pulls your leads to you, instead of you trying to find them. The ultimate in low cost marketing, social media has a better ROI than other forms of promotion. It is one of the most effective advertising methods that you can use.

Most businesses have discovered that word of mouth advertising and networking are two of the most successful ways to find new business or clients. Social media is simply a way to network and use word of mouth, online. Marketing with sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked-in helps others get to know you on a personal basis. You may not feel comfortable letting your private life come online, but by being transparent, you can easily establish a relationship, and build trust. People do business with people they know, like and trust, and social media helps this process happen quickly, in a way that is far less time consuming and costly than attending countless networking meetings.

As an example, after some strenuous work in the garden your back is killing you. You have heard that chiropractics can help, but you don’t have any idea how to find one. You mention this on your Facebook page and someone you know, replies with a recommendation for someone that they have used. You check out their business Fanpage, and start reading their tips and information about chiropractics and their business. You see their picture and send them a note to connect. You start learning way more about this doctor than just an ad in the yellow pages. You subscribe to his personal page and find out about his family, hobbies and belief system. Before you have even decided to make an appointment, you trust this person, not only from the recommendation from a friend, which interested you in the first place, but from the information he has left on the Internet about himself and his practice. This is advertising done right. Not only because you initiated the sale, from your interest, but also because it’s available whenever anyone decides to go online.

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Social media is promotion at its very best. The best time for the receiver, both physically and emotionally because the customer is ready to buy. Not a distracting interruption in the middle of an important game on television, and not when they are engrossed in an interesting magazine or newspaper ad. You have their full attention and they want to hear what you have to say. This is a message that is not an annoyance but helpful information that they have asked for.

Another advantage is the testimonials that you read. This is usually not from some famous person who has no connection, but information either from the person giving the service, or from a known friend or relative who has experienced the product and knows exactly what you are specifically looking for, because they know you and your situation.

If you are on a really small marketing budget, with more time than money, social media marketing is a very low cost strategy. None of these social media sites, and there are hundreds more, charge any fees for participation. You can have hundreds of sites, though it is wise to start with only the main the main sites listed above. Market your business for an hour or so a day and monitor the return that you get. This is not instant and it may take a few months, but there are many ways to participate well, using software that is again free. As your business takes off, because you are using these effective methods, than you can hire others to help you with many of the details of successful social media implementation.

If you are not using social media strategies in your marketing plan, now is the time to start. This method is in its relative infancy and like any other technology is changing rapidly. Participating using these methods is a must for your business to succeed. If you don’t have a website, using these strategies may even make having one unnecessary. Social media marketing will help you find new leads, quickly establish trust with customers and give you a good return on your time investment.

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Social Media Has Become an Essential for Small Businesses

In many ways, social media has swept over the world like the World Wide Web phenomenon more than 2 decades ago. At first it was adopted by a closed niche before quickly penetrating the general public. People stopped bothering to think whether social media was short-term trend not long after Facebook had hundreds of millions of users and surpassed Google as the most visited website – and businesses started pouring their marketing and advertising budgets into social media.

Company Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, Blogs, and YouTube Channels bloomed before it was even clear to most people what it was that social media would bring. Would the number of Facebook fans translate to increased website traffic? Would the number of Twitter followers lead to increased brand awareness? How were these social interactions measured? Or were they measurable at all?

Small Businesses and Social Media

Amid this social media boom we constantly hear success stories and talk-of-the-town phenomena (think – Old Spice). Social media became a platform for creative product launches, promotions, and customer service. Caught in this lighting-speed-paced, chaotic social media jungle are small businesses pondering about their own entrance and presence in the social media arena. With limited marketing budget to pay for top-notch social media services or employ in-house experts, where do small businesses turn? Getting a Facebook Page or a Twitter account set up might not be a problem for some, but are they doing it right? Or – the bigger question probably is – will small businesses be able to actively manage these social media pages and maintain a significant level of customer engagement?

TwentyfourSocial’s Social Media Services for Businesses

TwentyfourSocial.com is a one-of-a-kind social media service website targeted at small businesses that are looking for an easy, affordable, and comprehensive social media service. TwentyfourSocial provides one-time social media setup packages as well as monthly social media management packages.

What differentiates TwentyfourSocial from other social media service websites is the affordable and comprehensive pricing plans as well as the focus on speed and customization. TwentyfourSocial’s various social media packages have an attached price tag with details of the nature of the service – so customers need not have to contact the service provider to agree upon a fee prior to starting the service, as is the case with most social media services.

TwentyfourSocial’s Social Media Packages

TwentyfourSocial.com’s services comprise mainly of social media setup and social media management. Social media setup plans range from – , depending on the number of social media channels customers would like to create. One unique guarantee customers get is the delivery of their social media profiles within 24 hours. All customers need to do is submit their company information through TwentyfourSocial’s user-friendly platform. The rest of the social media setup work will be done by TwentyfourSocial’s experts.

TwentyfourSocial’s social media management plan maintains customers’ social media accounts updated and builds interaction with fans and followers. Facebook updates, Tweets, Blog posts, and YouTube updates are some of the services included. Plans range between – 9 per month. A social media content strategy session will be held with customers prior to starting the service, to ensure that the nature of the content posted on the social media channels are consistent with what customers want.

Some small businesses might have specific social media needs that are not directly addressed by TwentyfourSocial’s plans. TwentyfourSocial will be willing to address specific requests and tailor their services to meet unique needs. Businesses that have any questions or are interested in this social media service can contact TwentyfourSocial.

The Social Media Tools Of the Future?

The fact is when it comes to social media marketing; you need a variety of platforms that work for you. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have just have to immediately run to social media giants, such as Facebook or Twitter. Although, I’m not saying its best to venture away from these social media platform, but it still is a good idea to experiment with new platforms, as well as look at older platforms for social interaction.

Emarketer.com recently informed me a great deal about the potentialities of social media marketing tools, with their review on the top social media tools used in 2009 and 2010. Facebook came out as the top social platform for success as 71% of businesses used it in 2010, up by 10% from 2009. Whilst, Twitter was implemented only 59% of the time, but still gaining an whooping increase of 7%. Both were, however, beaten down by message/bulletin boards as a massive 93% of businesses declared it as a successful marketing tactic, compared to the 80% mark of marketing success through social media. Still considering social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter have not been around as long, we have seen considerable success and growth in the market, still making it one of the top social marketing tools.

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By the statistics given by Emarketer.com, it may also be time for SEO consultants or wannabes to turn their heads to another social media tool, Foursquare. Even though only used by 5% of businesses, it has according to the statistics a success rate of 75% – pretty good for a beginner on the market. The location based social networking site, Foursquare, meant for GPS enabled phones, is beginning to be one of the top successful tools simply because of the expansion of smartphones around the world. It is certainly one to look out for in the future, if you don’t have the time now to implement it into your SEO campaign.

Old school tactics are still doing relatively well. Although blogging’s success rate is down by 2% from 2009, it still is a successful method with an 86% success rate. Online videos are doing extremely well with a 93% success rate, even though due to cuts a small number of businesses use this methodology.

Overall, we are seeing an increase in the use of social media tools as print becomes more expensive and naturally goes out of fashion. In fact over 50% of businesses consider social media tools very important to their marketing success, whilst fewer than 10% consider it unimportant. Thus, in the next few years we will see a further increase in the use of these tools.

If you are interested in improving your SEO tactics, have a look for a freelance seo consultant from www.seoguy.co.uk

More Social Media Tools Articles

Using Social Media For Business

The rise of social media has transformed business as we once knew it. In the past business owners were limited in how they interacted with customers, how they collected information about them, and how they marketed new information and products to them. Today, these structures have been removed, permitting business owners to gather information, learn, and respond much faster than ever before.

It has also transformed the business landscape in another way, by creating a rift between those who know how to navigate social media sites and services, and those who do not. Those who don’t know how to use social media services may find themselves on the defensive constantly – doing anything to retain customers – even if they had a successful business model only a year ago. On the other hand, those who feel comfortable with social media may now find themselves at a significant advantage.

Whether you’re currently using social media to promote your business or are thinking about doing so, it is important for you to understand how to do it correctly. No matter whether you’re inexperienced or a veteran social marketer, if you don’t have the right information, it can be easy to botch a marketing campaign or simply run out of ideas.

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When using social media to enhance your business, take your time, and think very carefully about your social media identity before you create accounts or launch fan pages and start marketing through social media channels. Always remember that you need to be consistent with your social media identity. You will also need to decide whether to market your business as your business, as yourself , or as both. Each of the options has its benefits but it is ultimately up to you to decide which will work best for your particular situation. Once you have selected your route, you can then set up a profile that reflects your choice. For instance, an account for business should focus exclusively on your business activities- and not your personal life.

Alongside creating a consistent social media identity, you should also aim to create a coherent social media message. This will help you to find followers on your sites and then using those followers to collect information and market products. As you go through this process, it is important to maintain a coherent message. For this reason, it might make sense to spend some time planning a general ‘theme’ for your social media profiles. For instance, is their purpose to alert people to sales, and to tell them about contests you are holding? Or is the purpose to discuss the general industry in which your business falls.

There’s not necessarily a best approach to take here, but it’s important that you pick one and stick with it. Creating an incoherent message; and drive away potential customers who are following you.

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Top Social Media Sites You Might Be Missing

Over the past five years, social media revolution has just vibrated the web 2.0. With the release of different social media sites, World Wide Web has become a hub of millions of people. However, in order to keep pace with modern world where people love spending most of their time on social media sites, you have got to know the importance of social media sites. Let’s discover top social media sites you might be missing out.

 

5.

Stumble upon is one of the most popular social media sites that you might be missing out. Here you can share anything with millions of stumblers whenever you want. The most alluring thing here is that, by bookmarking your site on stumble upon, you can get thousands of instant traffic.

 

Action to be taken,

Sign up and bookmark you site.
Share any post of your site with millions of stumblers.

 

4.

Digg is considered to be the number one news sharing site on the internet. It may surprise you that, by sharing enticing news you can get hundreds of thousands of unique traffic.

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Actions to be taken:

Sign Up and share anything you like.
In order to get more clicks on your posted news, make sure that the title of your news is enticing and catchy.
Add as many targeted friends as you can.

 

3.

You Tube is considered to be the number One video sharing site. However, it is just surprising that, the number of viewer of you tube has been increasing day by day. Whatever your niche is, make some instructive and informative videos about that and upload those on you tube.

 

Actions to be taken:

Create your own video channel on youtube.
Make instructive videos and upload those on your channel.
Make sure that your site URL is visible on your uploaded videos to get instant web traffic.

 

2.

Twitter is considered to be the Web’s number one micro blogging network site. However, the thing that is interesting here is that, it’s probably the quickest and fastest way to get thousands of targeted traffic.

 

Actions to be taken:

Follow targeted followers and get followed by some of them.
Use bit.ly to shorten a URL.
Tweet more often with your URL’s shortened link to get instant web traffic.

 

1.

Facebook is the most popular social media site on the internet. Millions of people spend their time on facebook. Whether you are a business owner or a simple blog owner, you have got to utilize the facility of facebook to generate a lot of traffic.

 

Actions to be taken:

Create a fan page and design it.
Add as many targeted and loyal fans as you can.
Post enticing news about your site on the wall and get traffic to your site.

 

Therefore, I can say that, the importance of social media sites is just undeniable. However, in order to build a community on the internet, you need to use social media sites. On the other hand, it’s very easy and flexible to get a lot of traffic to your site by utilizing the social media sites properly.

 

Get a better understanding of the top 70 social media sites available and find out when you should use them for your business with this tool. Also included is an Alexa traffic rating, information on when the application was founded, hyperlinks to site, and a category column that you can sort. www.marketingpower.com
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Using Social Media for Business – TiYo

Using Social Media for Business – TiYo
Social media marketing is a recent addition to companies’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is an ideal way for organisations to follow, connect and interact with their targeted markets.
Incorporated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix; advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. Increasingly also viral marketing campaigns are grouped to integrated marketing communications. In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organisation is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However, the growth of social media has impacted the way societies communicate. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and work in partnership on projects online.
Social media marketing programs usually focus on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and more meaningful because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.

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Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Increased communication for organisations fosters brand awareness and better customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organisations to implement marketing campaigns. With development of services like ‘TiYo’, the barrier to entry in social media is greatly reduced.
Social media marketing which is known as SMO Social Media Optimization benefits organisations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, recruitment and retention of new customers/business partners, and a method of managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of the foundation on which it is built. A strong foundation serves as a stand or platform in which the organisation can centralise its information and direct customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as article and press release publications.
Tiyo (This is You Online) is a service that enables users and companies to manage, receive advice on, and grow their online presence in a way that is rewarding. The company was formed in 2011 and has the strong backing and involvement of experienced social media experts who want to give the companies involved, control over their own marketing. Tiyo is focused on providing analytics and a wide diversity of potential leads for their customers, and aims to provide industry based high income individuals as well as lower income individuals.
Tiyo’s concept has been described as ”A Social Media Management system in a box”. The system is being released Mid 2011 but in the meantime visit us on Facebook to learn more, when viewing us on Facebook hit the ‘Like’ button to keep informed!
Please see the link below.

The Critical Importance of Social Media for Business, an Expert’s Perspective

It’s what everyone is talking about, everywhere. Social media this, social networking that, Facebook here, Twitter there. You cannot get away from it. For people using social media personally, it is not only fun, it’s also a great way to connect to friends and family to see what’s happening in their worlds. For businesses however it’s a whole different story…

 

In his book ‘The Social Media Symphony’, social marketing expert Mike Magolnick talks about why is it such a critical tool for businesses. “Social Media is a great communication tool by definition but it is so much more than that. Social Media is a complete shift in the paradigm for communication, marketing and personal/professional interaction,” said Magolnick. “We’ve all heard the concept of a positive customer experience being shared with a few people, while a negative experience is shared with many. Social Media not only changes that game, it puts it in a whole different league. I’m talking about a five year old tee ball game versus game seven in the World Series different! Instead of being shared with an average of five to ten people, a negative experience now gets tweeted to hundreds, if not thousands of people. It gets posted on Facebook; and the amplification of one message on Facebook equals 130 times the number of connections the person has (the average Facebook user has 130 friends). If the person with the negative experience has 200 friends on Facebook, that equates to the negative experience being shared with 26,000 people! Plus, it gets blogged about and in some cases, you will find a video of it on YouTube. It’s not just a good idea for businesses to participate in Social Media, it’s an absolute necessity. If you aren’t actively managing your brand within Social Media understand that SOMEONE ELSE IS!”If the person with the negative experience has 200 friends on Facebook, that equates to the negative experience being shared with 26,000 people! Plus, it gets blogged about and in some cases, you will find a video of it on YouTube. It’s not just a good idea for businesses to participate in Social Media, it’s an absolute necessity. If you aren’t actively managing your brand within Social Media understand that SOMEONE ELSE IS!”

 

Magolnick has found personal success within social media as his blog site at www.magolnick.com entertains more than 10,000 visitors every day and his social universe has more than twenty-five million people. He used his own personal social network to promote the book www.socialmediasymphony.com on Amazon.

More Importance Of Social Media In Business Articles

Insight to Advantages of Social Media Marketing For Small Business

Well formulated marketing strategy scripts the success story of any business house. While the bigger enterprises invest millions of dollars for handling the marketing strategies of their businesses, the smaller counterparts tend to restore to the cost-efficient means. With internet becoming the most popular medium facilitating global communication, the smaller organizations have rightly lapped up the far reaching benefits of the internet and integrated online marketing into their business memorandum. Subsequent progress as well as popularity in realms of internet resulted in the evolvement of social media. Initially, social media popularized communication at a larger scale. The social media sites became a virtual association for the internet savvies. With the growing popularity of social media sites over the years, smaller businesses began to reckon its multifold utilities and began to market their services more effectively and efficiently through social media. Social Media Marketing for small business started producing effective outcome, whereby these business houses now became competent at approaching the targeted network of audience in the web and gain better avenues to initiate real time communication with the prospective customer base.

With social media touching the new high, the social networking sites also started gaining popularity. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have witnessed a flood of members registering as well as counts some million clicks per day. Same holds true forYouTube – a video sharing website. Then there is countless number of blogs and forums which also entice and attract the web savvies to dwell in. Hence, it will be apt to comment that social media has become an abode to millions of people who cling to these site for some reasons or the other. Harping on such a popular platform and developing marketing policies that attest the buzz is the best thing that the smaller business could have done. Hence, these small scale enterprises incorporated social media marketing strategies as core part of commerce. Social media marketing for small business ensure beneficial results in terms of contributing to a proper exposure as well as enhance the rate of traffic to the websites.

Social media marketing for small business have ushered in with loads of benefits. Owing to the low cost associated with social media marketing services, the small scale enterprise can reap the fruit of success with minimum amount of investment. However, social media marketing services require certain strategies that are to be followed to attract the mass. Social media marketing for small business must abstain from implementing haphazard promotional campaigns, rather such approach can be boomerang your cause for worst. It is thus recommended for the small businesses to avail the service of social media optimization firms that are at fray. These companies have professionals and social media experts who formulate strategies to approach online networks.

Proper social media optimization service tends to impart a strong impact on the businesses. If campaigning is carried out with some specific strategies the business houses can derive the optimum benefit and as well as witness the growing sales leads. Maintaining Blog and updating the same with regular posts, initiating communication through online discussion forums, articles and classified submission to different online directories, video and power point submission are few of the basic social media optimization services.

Adept marketing hold the key to the success of any business. In this era of tremendous competition, social media marketing for small business has been a true boon in real sense of term that will help a business stay ahead in competition. Furthermore, with the low cost of service associated with the social media marketing strategies, small business entrepreneurs can assure themselves optimum benefits as far as the brand awareness and traffic generation to their sites are concerned.

Canada’s Top Social Media Companies and Consultants In review

Our team was extremely encouraged by the pings and general feedback we got for our analysis of the top five telcos and their prowess (or lack of) in mastering the social media field.  Thousands are following us even though we’ve just begun our series.   Some of the feedback was from the telecos themselves. However, much of the feedback was from social media companies, SEO firms and consultants who are following our analysis with great gusto.  They are right to be interested.  I hope they can follow along as we have tried to make our synoposis as simple as possible.

Search Engine Placement Success or Failure

Most of the social media firms reviewed offer the sterling search engine placement promise. In simple English, the goal is to get your messages to show up on the search engine first pages.  If done correctly, your messages can quickly attain the coveted first page placement on search engines by defined categories.  This can be compared to having an ad on the front page of every newspaper in Canada.  It’s the Holy Grail sought on your behalf by companies we review here.  Unfortunately, they make their clients wait and wait to catch the prize, that is, if they capture it for them at all.

By contrast, our previous article about the top five telcos’ lack of success with social media showed up on the first pages of all selected search engines within a few hours of launch.   We’re not telling you that to advertise our services.  We don’t offer services, just free opinion.  We use social media to share our views on social media, not for profit.

There’s no secret sauce to accomplish first page placement.  Knowledge and experience of how search engines work are important. But other fundamentals must also be in place.  We looked at a variety of social media firms to see how they did on the fundamentals.  Here’s what we found.

Search Engine Verification

None of the so-called experts’ sites we reviewed were set up for verification by the big three search engines.  These firms are claiming on their web sites that that they are the best of the best in the social media arena.  Their sites are supposed to advertise their skills and experience.  However, these sites are not even competently sprung to allow search engines to index their sites. This is a clear case of leaving the cheese out of your mousetrap.  How are search engines finding these firms’ sites?  The answer is, slowly and maybe eventually.  So, if they can’t get it straight for themselves, what kind of advice are they giving their paying clients? Taking social media guidance from these kinds of “experts” is like taking health advice from a fat doctor who smokes.  Consultant, heal thyself.

Bots and Crawlers

Establishing verification for your site also enables search engine bots and crawlers in finding your site.  Which brings me to another mistake on the part of these firms. Bots and crawlers need instruction when they hit your web site’s front door code. Why haven’t these experts used the proper code?  That’s what you should ask yourself before hiring them. In order to get your pages searchable the bots and crawlers need to be invited in. Simply put, they can’t ring a doorbell that isn’t there.

Web Sites

Most of the sites we reviewed closely resembled each other in appearance, layout and format. These firms almost all look like they are captives of cookie-cutter thinking. If that is their best presentation, what kind of sites do they advise their clients to establish?  With surprising consistency, they relied on presenting the same series of terms, offers and site references. In fact, many use the same social media articles and reports that are easily found on the Web. You would think an expert would have an original opinion to share, based on social media expertise and creative outlook. I do not promote sites, however, there were some that stood out as interesting ones with fresh site presentation and original opinions.  If you are looking at sites in search of potential social media expertise, I recommend looking for those with unique offerings and plain-English descriptions of how they solved problems and achieved success for their paying customers.  Stay away from the ones that express themselves in high tech bamboozle lingo.

All the reviewed sites shout that their owners are the best in Canada or the world.  Typically, there is a photo of the company principle(s) accompanied with promos for his or her next seminar, book they are reading and the like.  Maybe their family and friends care, but why should you?  And why would you pay to go to a seminar presented by someone who doesn’t understand social media basics and hasn’t applied them to their own web site.  I found one site, a two-person shop, claiming to be the largest in Canada.  Who are they subcontracting their massive amount of work to?  No indication on their site.  So, who are you really dealing with if you if you have a contract with this company?  No indication on the site.  If, as they claim, they are the best Canada has to offer, what does it say about the state of the industry in this country?

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Why would I attend their seminar when it isn’t clear what they have accomplished for their clients?  Do they, for example, tell you how long it took their clients to get social media traction or how much?  No, they don’t.  Showing a client list may demonstrate you have customers, but that’s about it. Flaunting a client list is bad business practice.  In the first place, you are revealing your customer base to your competitors.  Second, it shows you have so little content of interest to convey that you rely on filling space with these lists.  Finally, you may have a niche of customers, which means other potential clients may assume you only handle specific silos of interest.

A Bird a Book a Link and a Blog

Recently, I read Canada is a few years behind comparable countries when it comes to social media implementation.  I can see why.  For example, the overwhelming applications chosen by these companies are a bird, (Twitter) a book (Facebook), a link and a blog.  That means they lean heavily on a few shopworn applications to define their social media architecture.   This is a very skimpy tool kit to say the least.  These applications are powerful, but if used improperly or in a limited way, they can actually net social media marketing failure.  The use of these applications to reach the intended goal, getting top-of-page status on search engines, can actually backfire.

These companies have set up these overused and abused applications aiming to drive traffic to their clients’ sites and gain followers.  But their clients’ content was promotional and ad-like.  This is a fatal combination.

Here’s why.  If your content is all about product or service promotion and then set on the on the bird, book, link and blog track, your messages just swirl around in the Web ether, not gaining traffic or traction on the social media train.  Why is that?  Many enabling sites in the social media space, pure content sites in particular, do not like commercial promotion articles or other ad material. These are the sites that you really want on your side.  These are the ones that have a mighty thrust when it comes to sending traffic from their site to others. The really useful ones won’t do that if your content is blatant advertising.  They reject brand names in articles or links to commercial content sites.  Simple as that.

Effectively, the social marketing companies are placing their clients’ content in the same crowded field as their customers’ direct and indirect competitors. What’s the result?  Their clients’ messages sink like a stone in the social media marketing pond.

Social media and SEO good practice is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Building an effective social media network requires deployment of applications and sites that get Web users to share your content.  The idea is to create a network of existing and potential consumers to absorb and pass on your content to others.

Limiting yourself to bird, book, link and blog with immediately rejectable content should obviously be avoided.  You are marketing so think like a marketer.

For example, there are hundreds of social network sites that function like Facebook, but targeted to specific demographic segments and/or niched interests, everything from travel and sports to parenting and dating.  The advantage of using these sites in a marketing strategy is clear.  The social media consultants we reviewed, locked as they are to a four-item list of applications, do not seem to know about these sites.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t keep hitting the Facebook gong and sending their clients’ messages into a general rather than niched stream.  Go to this link to see a good list of sites that are much better marketing vehicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites. You will find very interesting information about social media sites listed by interest and category.  All of them are FREE of charge.

Again, think like a marketer. If you are selling tea cozies, seek the attention of tea drinkers and teapot connoisseurs.  Don’t throw yourself into a giant space where people are hawking everything from salami to suds.  If, for example, you are selling to a younger market, join a social media site that has a defined base of young adults. Many exist and are of surprising size.  Interests tied to an age group can also be targeted through the proper social media applications. You can find lists of them by simply using a search engine.  Maybe there are young people, age 15 to 24, who are mad about tea cozies.  Find out before you launch your content or hand over your marketing dollars to the social media industry cabal.

Web 2.0

We all celebrate Web 2.0. This application refers to the second generation of the Web. It lets people with no specialized technical knowledge create their own web sites, self-publish, make and upload audio and video files, share photos and information and so on.  They are meant to be accessible to non-technical users.  That is their beauty. It’s also how social media pirates take advantage of their clients.  They exploit these applications, which anyone can learn how to use, and present them as a their skills and know-how package.  Worse, they apply them without first creating a social media marketing strategy.  That’s how your tea cozy content winds up in the Web equivalent of Dry Gulch Nowhere.

Social Media Marketing Strategy Informs Content

Before setting out, you need a social media strategy, which is essentially an old fashion marketing strategy, set to exploit social media as a vehicle.  Remember social media is ONLY the vehicle, not what dictates the message.   At the core of your strategy is how to treat your messages, i.e., how to prepare content of compelling interest to your target audience.  None of the sites reviewed talked about a marketing strategy as a starting point.  I guess they don’t know about it.

So before seeking assistance from a social media company, I would head to a PR firm or traditional media strategy group.  If I had a smaller company with a limited budget, I’d head to the nearest post-secondary journalism or public relations school.  Here you will find talented and interested students, all wired to the Web and social media.  They are social media savvy, creative and will work for a lot less than the high priced guys downtown.

Your strategy will inform your content, as well as how it’s written and where it’s placed. Remember when you enter the social media sphere you need to keep feeding interesting writing in a non-sales format to your audience.  For example, consider writing a blog on the art of crocheting the perfect tea cozy like the one granny used to make.  Don’t write a sales pitch on the merits of Acme Tea Cozies Inc. and pound away at the company brand.   If only sales messages are delivered you will annoy and, in the worst case, repel your potential reader/customer. Like telemarketing or e-mail blasts, it will make your customer hate your brand.  And, worst of all, you won’t develop the golden following who will pass on your content and drive traffic to your web site, blogs etc.

Overall, Canada’s prominent social media and SEO companies and consulting firms bombed out on social media basics.  Their own web sites are startling examples of how they don’t understand their own craft.  They are not upfront about what they accomplish for their clients.  In fact, they really are simply selling vaporware.  For those readers who did not come out of the Dot-com era, it’s “A term used to describe a piece of software that doesn’t exist, is suspected not to exist, or is incapable of performing as promised”.  To put it another way, buyer beware.