Small business owners with a desire to grow an online presence seek the help of website marketing services for measurable ways to get more visitors to their internet home.

What are some ways that local businesses can accomplish this right away? Let’s look at a few of the most popular options.

First, keep in mind that people are online looking for business information now more than ever. While the internet is still very young, it has completely transformed the way we search for information – from a business phone number all the way to in-depth information about a product.

People use their phone book and the newspaper (if they still get one delivered to their home) less and less. They go to Google and other search engines and look for the information they seek. Website Marketing Services have statistics that show people will search online 80% of the time before they buy a product. Local results are seen right away and small businesses want to be on the first page, and at the top of the Google list.

Ok.. back to some great ways to get traffic to your website.

1- Start a blog that can be updated often. A company’s main website is usually built either to sell product or provide information about the company and/or the products. It is built and then stays the same. A blog will have new posts and the opportunity to use those posts as a way to rank in the search engines so that people searching there will find the blog, and eventually the website right at the top of searches for important key word terms.

2- Use Social Media. Get accounts in the most popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (if you want to use pictures for marketing) and Youtube (if you plan to use video to market). Find a couple of industry related sites as well. Use social bookmarking sites.

3- Give something of value away for free on your main website and have an opt-in box to build a list of people and email addresses so that you can continue to communicate with them. If you don’t do this, chances are many visitors who find your website won’t return.

4- Have a customer newsletter and offer it to the new list of prospects you are building as well. Include information of value and consider making it personable with company news, pictures, guest columns by staff. You can have a trivia question or post a poll for information gathering purposes. Be creative.

5- Local business listing was mentioned earlier and it should not be underestimated that there will be a huge ROI if you take the time to optimize your local listing.

6- Article marketing is similar to blog posting only you post the content in article directories. This can bring direct visitors to your site but is also used to build your site’s popularity and search engine rankings.

7- Press release submissions are a great way to market a website because they can give quick exposure to a business and help get new customers. Anytime there is news to share, a press release should be written. You can get creative and look for ways to make news.

Keyword terms or phrases are most important in overall website marketing. There are benefits in terms of the search engines and also with social media marketing. People search keywords in social sites to find information and for buying decisions.

Website promotion can be overwhelming and even frustrating to a small business owner who is busy running his company every day. Website Marketing Services exist to help this process so that a win-win goal is accomplished where the small business owner is growing a business with the expertise the service provides.

For Immediate Release

Social Media for Business has exploded onto the Washington small business website marketing scene, as well as in cities and towns all across the United States; and with it an abundance of hesitation and confusion. Using a Social Media Marketing Guide has been recommended to provide structure and a plan to achieve success.

YourWebSiteMarketingService.com has announced the immediate release of their Social Media Marketing Guide as a shortcut for Washington businesses to participate in the Social Media world, and have the opportunity to cut through the confusion and information overload that they are currently experiencing.

Vicki Zerbee, Small Business Website Marketing and Social Media Specialist with YourWebSiteMarketingService.com states, “With the number of social media websites available on the internet today, the strategic ways that each are used, and the fact that social media marketing is very different from traditional offline marketing, it is no wonder that small businesses do not know where to start with this new marketing platform. We are taking the guesswork out for them.”

Businesses understand that they need to have a website presence. With consumers going to the internet to find out information about products, services, and local businesses, more than they go to the phone book or newspaper, all businesses must be online. Once they get their website up and running, the majority of small businesses struggle to market it.

“We have found that businesses who have a social media strategy or a plan can realize remarkable results,” Zerbee commented. She went on to say, “And for a limited time we are including our 5 Point Checklist for companies to verify they have their website structured correctly to market it online. Small business owners are shocked to find that websites they spent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to have made are actually hurting them in terms of advertising on the internet.”

Small business owners are confused about how to participate in Social Media most effectively. Can they do it in-house? How much time does it take? What social websites work best and how do you use each individual site? What is the difference between blogs, bookmarking sites, networking sites, etc.? What if they desire to outsource the work? The list of questions is endless.

Zerbee concludes, “There is a definite need for a Social Media Marketing Guide that will help small businesses, and solo entrepreneurs as well, to participate in this new Social Media world and to understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. There is a lot of information on the internet, but it is scattered and hard to put together into a workable plan without months or even years of studying how to use Social Media. We created this guide as a shortcut to get started right away.”

To learn more about the Social Media Marketing Guide, and for a limited time how to get a Five Point Check List that will help most small businesses improve their internet marketing results almost immediately, at no extra cost, visit http://www.YourWebSiteMarketingService.com.
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I read a story last week about a real estate agent trying to use Facebook for Business Marketing. With the explosion of Facebook for business use, that real estate agent is part of businesses world wide doing the same.

This agent signed up for a Facebook account and filled out a profile. To my knowledge this real estate professional did not get so far as to create a business page.

You see, Facebook is ’social’ for both personal AND business. You can keep them separate, or you can use both. This agent was contacted by a former high school classmate and proceeded to exchange messages.

The spouse of that classmate did not take it so well, and it turned out to be a bad experience for the real estate agent. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but this agent sure took it hard.

Then came the question: What is Facebook good for anyway? I don’t have time to spend in Facebook with all of the other parts of my job. I don’t want to sit around chatting to people or looking at pictures all day.

This real estate agent was missing the opportunity of Facebook for business. The same way we build relationships and engage in conversation offline, for both present business and to promote future business, is now being done online as well.

Conversations, new prospects, building relationships, sharing valuable information, answering questions, attracting people to a business – this is all being successfully accomplished within Facebook. Sometimes it is by re-connecting with people that already know, like, and trust us. And a large part of it is showing those same qualities with new people that are on Facebook, who are looking for what we have to offer.

Let’s face it. Crazy situations like the real estate agent experienced can happen offline as easily as online. The difference in doing business today is that people are now ‘online’ looking for information. They are talking about what they need, what they are going to buy, their problems, asking questions, asking for referrals. They are doing this in social sites online, like Facebook, and searching on the search engines as well.

The reality is that businesses need to be where the people are. The problem is that most businesses do not know where to start. If you search for information online, you can get completely overwhelmed. There is TOO MUCH information.

What is lacking right now, for small and medium size business owners who like to keep their social media efforts in-house, is a guide or a daily plan to participate in the social media world.

Recently Facebook Pages changed their ‘Become a Fan’ button to ‘Like’. There were mixed reactions although many people like the idea of choosing ‘Like’ since they feel it is more casual than officially becoming a ‘fan’ of different pages.

The changes were quite a bit more far reaching than that. These ‘Like’ buttons have started to appear on third party websites. They are not the same as ‘liking’ something on one of your friend’s page, which stays on that page – within Facebook.

The new ‘Like’ button that you see on non-Facebook pages all over the internet is a very viral action that you take when you click. It is being carried back to Facebook for all of your followers to see – posted on your page and in your news feed for anyone you are connected with to see.

An also, now your profile picture shows up on that third party website for any of your Facebook friends – who happen to be on that site – to see. And the information is carried back to your Facebook page for your friends to see. Think about this for business use – the creative ways to use it are going to be endless.

Let me leave you with a few Facebook suggestions for business use.

1- A Facebook page for your business is an opportunity to build a community of prospects, customers, and advocates for your business. Take full advantage of your page by directing new people to a ‘Welcome’ link on your page (use Facebook FBML to create it) where you can post your message, add an opt-in form as part of your list building process, and personally show them the value you are going to give them when they ‘Like’ your page. There are many strategies available for building business pages.

2- Import your blog so that each time you post, all of your Facebook friends and connections will see your valuable content.

3- The same rules that apply to social media in general apply to using Facebook for business: LISTEN, Interact, React, Sell – in that order. The ’sell’ will take care of itself if you (the business) does the first three. The interact and react steps are focused on helping people that you identify in the ‘Listen’ step by sharing information, answering questions, offering solutions – not direct selling.

4- Last, why do you need to start using Facebook NOW? The future of social media is that it will take on a life of its own – trends will be merged with social media and we will be able to see what everyone is doing, what they are purchasing, etc. Searches won’t be as much about what the search engines think as they will be about what your peers, prospects, and customers think.

Thanks for your time today. As always, we welcome your feedback, questions, and invite you to connect.

Social media marketing is not really about wizards, but I do have an interesting story to tell you where wizards did benefit from this new way to market a business online.

So the vice president of marketing at Universal Orlando Resorts had the responsibility of planning a marketing strategy to introduce the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park there in Florida. She could have chosen any media form she desired, any marketing platform, with a potentially huge price tag attached.

What she chose to do was to tell 7 people about it. That’s right. She told the 7 most popular bloggers about it, and she told them on a secret midnight webcast that she ran. She invited those 7 bloggers and introduced them to the new theme park right on the webcast. Can you guess what happened next? No.. she didn’t get fired!

What happened was that people ‘talked’ about it. The 7 bloggers blogged about it right after the webcast. Lots of their followers blogged about it also, and talked about it with family and friends all over the world, and put it on all of their social sites where it would be spread by connections in those places. Main stream media follows those blogs and they wrote about it. Within 24 hours of telling 7 people, 350 million people heard about it. 350 MILLION people.

Initially, the vice president of marketing thought she might be fired given the reaction of her bosses who thought she should be doing television commercials, magazine advertisements, and telling the press. She wanted to tell 7 people and it turned out pretty well. This is a demonstration of ‘earning attention’ – getting people to talk about you, spread your ideas, tell your stories – as opposed to buying attention (advertising) or begging (public relations).

Now you may be thinking, I don’t have a business the size of Universal Orlando Resorts – most of us don’t. However, businesses of all sizes are using social media right now because – that is where the people are! And if you think about it, people – and attention – is what we are all looking for when we market a business or service.

The traditional ways of marketing are ‘buying’ and ‘begging’ that we mentioned, along with bugging (sales). The new way to market is to ‘earn’ attention – to ‘pull’ prospects and customers into your world instead of ‘pushing’ out a message (advertise).

Right now there is a buzz about social media. You may be participating already, or you may be still considering how to plug in. At some point, most businesses – national brands and local brands – will need to participate. Yellow pages and newspapers are not where the majority of people are looking for business information anymore.

One of the main differences in social media marketing vs. traditional marketing is cost. The low price tag of social media means that any size business can engage in marketing their product using this new platform. Time is the key with social media. A small business can choose to learn how to market with social media and do all the work themselves, or even pay for some consulting work or a social media guide and then go to work.

Larger businesses hire someone in-house to be their social media manager, or outsource the work to a service that specializes in social media marketing. Either way, the key is having an active system in place because just as the example above demonstrates, once you start putting the word out about your business – on a social website – someone is bound to comment or engage with you. It really isn’t ’social’ to ignore a response that you will get.

Questions will need answered, comments will need addressed, and simply participating in the conversation will grow the social presence of the business. Social media can become very viral – quickly. If you incorporate real and creative marketing ideas and strategies that will educate, enlighten, or entertain your market, the same as you do with offline advertising, people will help you spread the word.

There really isn’t magic needed to ‘do’ social media marketing. The magic is what you will enjoy when you put forth the efforts, really engage with a community online and build an active website presence.

Social Media Marketing is a new opportunity for any size business to promote their product or service online. However, it’s not about selling. It’s about reach their target market by providing useful content that helps that market solve a problem or deliver a solution.

Being social, building relationships, providing value, and making the decision to embrace this new Web 2.0 way of marketing a business online is what we have to master. There is a system that can be utilized to accomplish social media marketing tasks. Business owners shouldn’t be in the dark about WHAT to do.

Here is a Press Release from FastPitch News.

Instead of a business owner ignoring this new way to market and advertise a business, for any number of reasons, a step-by-step guide has been released to facilitate a company’s step into the social media world and provide a general understanding of the rules.

In response to the overwhelming attention that social media and social media marketing is getting, and the confusion that small businesses to large corporations experience about the new social media platform, YourWebSiteMarketingService.com has developed a solution.

First, there are companies who may be too small to hire a new staff member to do the social media work. While it should be part of the advertising and/or marketing budget of a business, some of those budgets are very low in the current challenging economic situation.

Second, there are businesses that have not embraced the internet in terms of marketing or advertising. They may have a website, but they do little if any work to promote it. A website will not get found by the majority of its potential visitors unless it is promoted.

Third, some business owners are afraid of the internet. They do not understand it or are concerned with what will be said about their company. What that group should realize is that the conversation is already taking place whether they choose to participate or not.

Right now there are large corporations employing social media teams. Some are realizing great success and measured return on investment. Others aren’t faring so well. Even with a team in place, it that team is not prepared to effectively use social media, it’s not going to work.

We have seen companies attracting huge followings online, and then completely ignoring the conversation there. Social media is not only for huge brands. Every small business in every small town can utilize social media and social media marketing to grow their business.

Social media and social media marketing can transform a business by creating new relationships, increasing sales, building advocates for the business, and enjoying loyal new customers. The way the business engages in social media will determine the success that results.

After observing the confusion and misuse of social media, as well as the fear of getting started due to the unknown, a Social Media and Social Media Marketing Guide was produced to ease the transformation from marketing of the past (that no longer works) to the new world of advertising and marketing a business on the internet.

Social Media does not have to be complex. It is centered around conversation and promotion of valuable materials shared by the business. It is engaging and even enjoyable. It creates relationship and communication. Social Media is an exciting new way to promote a business and now it has been made easier than ever to begin.

To learn more about or secure a copy of the Social Media and Social Media Marketing Guide, visit Social Media Marketing Guide.

A business owner can Google ‘How to Use Social Media’ and may be amazed at the number of results that are returned.  It will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 278 million web pages that talk about Social Media.  How are you not to get confused?

The information you read will inspire you – because Social Media is an exciting new way to market a business.  It will enlighten you – because there is a great deal of good information.  And it is sure to confuse you – big time.  That is because there is so much material and it is not very organized for productivity; in other words it is mostly scattered information that is hard to put into a workable plan for the inexperienced social media marketer.

Social Media is not about posting information – whether it be in the form of written content, audio, or video – and then sitting back and waiting for something to happen.  Even if you put a lot of time, effort, and expense in developing the content – it won’t be enough to post it and forget it.  Social Media Marketing is an important component.  It is the promoting of this great content you are sharing.

Being interactive, encouraging engagement, and helping in the form of giving solutions, solving problems, or answering questions, is what creates the buzz around your company, your product, and your service.  This is what social media marketing is all about, and it can be very powerful.

Asking your prospects and customers to participate in the conversation that takes place in your brand’s social media space, and inviting them to contribute to the content you provide, will build interest and have people talking about you.  Being active yourself in responding to what is being said, and also seeking out ways you can help, will make a difference.

Part of social media marketing is searching for conversations and then participating in a helpful way, not a ’selling’ way.  This builds a reputation of integrity and value.  The key to social media is the spread of your information, by the people who like it enough to want to share it with someone.  This is how word is spread online in social networking sites.  It is important because, now more than ever before, people like to buy from people they know, like, and trust.

Social media has opened up a whole new world to the consumer.  They can talk directly with the brand now.  They feel more important to the brand and they want more information than ever before, including personal referrals for the brand.  So they want to hear what others have to say, and the way a brand makes a positive impact on the people that will refer them is to engage with them online.  The opportunity to develop content, for little or no cost, that is delivered very publicly on the internet is quite beneficial to the company if done with the primary benefit of the consumer in mind.

Investment in social media is more in terms of time than money.  There is money to be spent in online advertising for sure, but right now many social sites have little or no cost.  The investment is more in terms of time for the business owner who is tackling the project alone, and money if you have to outsource the work that is time consuming.  Some brands choose to invest in a social media plan and have a current employee do the work.  Others with a larger budget may hire a social media consultant or outsource the work to a reputable service.

The takeaway is that Social Media is not only about Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or any of the social websites, even though they are part of the story.  It is about providing content that will attract and benefit people, and then the engaging you do with people to build loyalty and trust.  A business should realize that authenticity is important because what you say as you represent your brand is turning out to be much more important than how polished and attractive your content looks.  Providing value is what will benefit your business because this creates the buzz around your company that people want to pass along.

This is the last part of a 4 part series on Social Media (links provided in case you have missed the first three):  WHAT, WHY, PAYOFF.

We have talked about the fact that social media is conversation online.  It is happening all over the internet and is discussions about content that is posted online or something that is happening offline as well.  Content that is produced by businesses to engage conversation can take the form of video, audio, or written including inside blogs, forums, all types of social sites and membership sites.

We’ve also discussed why it’s important to be ‘in the conversation’.  Businesses are increasing brand awareness, building significant followings, and producing more sales by integrating their company with social media marketing.

The ultimate goal of using social media for business is to get traffic to the website so that you can share more about your company’s product or service.  There are many social media tools available to do this.  The engagement you create with people in the social sites is what will help spread your message.  When people you are connected to approve what you are saying, they will spread the word just like offline word-of -mouth advertising.

HOW do you join the conversation?

Social media facilitates the communication between people online.  You will join the most popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and create a space there where you have the opportunity to build a large following.  Posting valuable content in these spaces is what will attract others to you, in addition to brand awareness if you are an established business.

Posting content regularly is necessary because people are not going to come back to the same stale content on a page.  Each time you post something, you will want to kick in your social media marketing plan for the content.  The more you attract people to the content, the more targeted people you will build for ongoing communication opportunities.

Triggering conversation about your business is accomplished by searching for what is being said and responding to it.  Answer questions, ask questions, give helpful information, provide valuable content.  These are all ways to join the conversation.

What you want to target is an opportunity to provide a link back to your website each time you post something in a social site.  That way, people can find out more about your business when they read something interesting that you wrote.  This is another ongoing task:  to search places online to engage with people and establish relationships.

People are always looking for new content, information about a product or service including features and reviews, help with something, answers to their questions, and discussion about experiences with products and services.  They want direct access to the business, possibly even the CEO.  The more you engage in the talk that is already happening online (about the market or industry itself and specific companies), the more you will integrate your business into social media and work toward conversion of engagement into sales.

When you give people the chance to associate themselves with you online, you are laying the groundwork for leveraging this communication for your benefit – at the same time, you are providing benefits to your following.  Social Media is about sharing and relationship more than it is about selling.  It is the model for the old saying that the more you give to others, the more that comes back to you.

The biggest takeaway today is threefold:

1)  You must be active every day.  Once you begin to participate in social media there will be conversation daily.  You need to be responding to this communication and adding to it.

2)  It is important to establish relationships, share valuable information, and not look for an immediate sale.  People want to know that you care and are genuine about the business you represent.

3)  Patience is required. Social media marketing is a process and most of the time it takes time and effort building a presence online before sales are realized.

To continue the conversation since the HOW is an ongoing adventure, we will be developing videos and written material for you to view and consider for your social media needs.

Come back often and discover new materials.  Better yet, sign up for our RSS feed and you will be notified when we have something new for you.

This is the 3rd part of a 4 part series on Social Media (links provided in case you have missed the first two): WHAT, WHY, PAYOFF, and (coming next) HOW.

Social Media Payoff (ROI) is tough to measure, and some will say you can’t calculate it yet. It is too soon because Social Media Marketing is so new. That being said, there are definite payoffs being enjoyed by businesses of all sizes and in all markets.

We will list some specific companies and numbers below, but first let’s discuss a very important consideration that will affect ROI outcome. There are many ways to implement social media marketing and some may have little or no return on investment. Participating in social media in ways that are effective involve two major components: engagement in the form of conversation (not selling), and active involvement (not a once and forget method of marketing). Companies that utilize social media in the same way that the people they want to target WANT TO BE SOCIAL, will enjoy the most success in terms of ultimately growing brand awareness and ROI online.

While there is still a place for search engine optimization (SEO), where a website is optimized to rank high in the search engines, we now have social media marketing, including social sites that are ranking high in the search engines. No longer do we have to pay thousands of dollars to buy backlinks to a business website. Today, we must spend the TIME that is required to participate in social media for the greatest payoff.

The fact that social media marketing does not have a fixed cost is true because each social media project is unique and will require varying amounts of time, tools, services, etc. A social media plan should include comprehensive use of available social media sites and opportunities for engagement, and should be targeted to the industry, product, or service. A generic plan without a focus on the business will not work.

What most people who work in the social media field understand is that trying to put a cost on conversation is hard to do. Also, social media marketing usually does not produce instant results. If this is true, how do we measure success?

One way is to measure the feedback you are getting. Are there positive responses being posted, and is there growth in terms of numbers of people engaging with the company online? If the business is getting active supporters, they will – in time – spread the word.

It is important to understand that social media marketing takes hard work, consistent effort, and engaging in ways that are helpful, entertaining, educational, or enlightening. This is the way you build a group of followers who want to take action by telling their online friends when you announce something of value.

There are tools to use that can help measure ROI in terms of: your reach, traffic to the website, influence in the market, conversions, and
retention. Google analytics is a free service that can track information for any website. There are other free services and many paid services as well. Links to the website can be tracked with backlink tools. The numbers of fans, followers, members, etc. in social sites is readily accessible in each of the individual sites.

Worthy of repeating is the idea that social media marketing is ongoing and requires active participation. People will not stay engaged if there is not regular, new content posted. There are many other websites that will pull for their attention. If you give them a reason to come back, they will not only come back but tell others to do the same.

Some numbers that testify to the ROI businesses can achieve:

BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker.

Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter.

Vaynerchuk (WineLibrary.tv) found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 in Billboard Advertising = 300 new customers, AND $0 with Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

Naked Pizza, all natural Pizzeria in New Orleans, that specializes in healthy pies, set a one day sales record using social media. In fact 68% of their sales came from people “calling in from Twitter.” And 85% of their new customers were from Twitter.

Safeway has 62,615 fans of Facebook.

Intuit introduced “Live Community” into their TurboTax® products 2 years ago. Due in part to the resulting word-of-mouth, they have seen unit sales increase +30% each year and have now integrated “Live Community” into their other products like QuickBooks, Quicken, etc.

Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As a result of retweets, the Atlanta Chapter site received 11,000 visitors in 24 hours as a result of this initiative by ResponseMine Interactive.

Software company Genius.com reports 24% of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities.

Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper. The estimated investment for this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value. Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)

One survey found that 71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It.

The takeaway is that if you work your social media plan with integrity and the commitment to contribute value, on an every-day consistent basis, the same as you would do offline in relationships with prospects – it becomes easy and natural. That is what people are looking for in advertising and marketing – and that is what they will reward by doing business with you and referring you to others as well.

To learn more, visit our social media marketing page.

Yesterday we discussed ‘WHAT is Social Media’ (if you missed it, check out the post here) and scheduled the ‘WHY’ for today.

STRONG WHY:

Successful businesses who want to grow will keep up to date with marketing methods that will work for their industry.  Social Media is the NEW way to advertise or market a business, and it will work with any market because so many people now have access to the internet.  Let’s agree with the fact that, now, people go online to get information and to make buying decisions more than they go to the local newspaper or yellow page books.  That’s a fact.

The other part of the story is that we are living in the age of information, where we are able to access more information than ever before, and connect with people at almost every level of a business than ever was possible in the past.  People want to ask questions, have discussions, get feedback from trusted friends, and they are doing this on the internet.  CEO’s of major companies are present in social channels online, and talking with customers, prospects, or whoever is asking them questions.

The next consideration is that even if you are not participating, your customers and prospects are.  They’re already online, talking about the kinds of  products or services that you represent, maybe they are talking about you, and probably they are talking about your competition.  Chances are that your competition is there as well.  And every day that you aren’t, you are losing potential business.

What are people doing online when they are researching products and services they are interested?

Watching video clips

Reading articles on blogs, websites, and news sites

Visiting business social pages

Viewing images

Listening to podcasts

Talking in forums

Being active in communities

Businesses in every market are using all of the above to connect with people, engage in conversation with them, attracting new and loyal customers from this transparent new way to market.  On the internet, it is imperative to be genuine and reputable because if you are not, someone is going to tell the world about it.

When you start using Social Media for your business, the most important advice you can take is to CARE about your message and CARE about the people who will see and respond to it.  That will lead to a very important WHY:  you will build a group of customers who will not only be satisfied with the service or product you provide them, but will become ADVOCATES for you by spreading the word through this very viral community of the internet.

It may seem overwhelming until we get to the HOW do you actually ‘do’ Social Media.  That’s coming in a future post (or available by clicking on the WWW (world wide web) picture on the top right of this page) – for now it is important that you understand the WHAT, WHY, and PAYOFF associated with social media marketing.

Tomorrow’s discussion:  PAYOFF, or ROI, with Social Media.

The more you dig into the Social Media world, the more answers you may get in terms of definition of the term.  Collectively, they still add up to the same thing.  Social media is conversation that takes place online.

The internet is where people now go to get information on products, services, businesses, locations, directions, etc.  The internet is also where people are talking to each other about all of these things.

Social media is the communication between both individuals and groups – in all kinds of ways – all over the world wide web. The social sites that we use to engage in conversations are our marketing tools.  Tools will come and go, but this advertising and marketing method is here to stay.  Remember that the internet is still very young, and every day new people are getting access.

Social media is an opportunity for people to talk directly with major brands in a way that was never available before.  And small businesses can use social media exactly the way much larger businesses are doing – right now there is nothing to hold any business back from participating.

The cost of social media is measured more in terms of time than it is in dollars.  In order to effectively join this new way to market a business, and have success with it, there has to be a consistent and sincere effort to engage on the popular social networking sites as well as industry specific locations.

Advertising and marketing is no longer about pushing out a message, in the form of an advertisement, to a general crowd or even a targeted market.  People do not want to be ’sold to’ anymore.  Prospective buyers want information, referrals, testimonies, and conversation about a brand, service, or products.

Social media is about attracting a crowd, pulling them in to your message, by engaging them in conversation, posting valuable (helpful) content online, entertaining, educating, enlightening their market.

And it’s not only enough to provide this great content.  The other part of Social Media is the marketing of the message:  Social Media Marketing.  Helping the content to be seen to an even wider audience is achieved by consistent efforts to market the messages in strategic (non-selling) ways.

Promoting your business online using online social channels can include answering questions, listening to concerns, establishing relationships, asking for feedback, and building brand awareness.  The most effective way to utilize social media marketing is to constantly be in touch with the conversation that is already happening about your brand, and responding to it in a sincere way.

There are multiple returns for social media marketing efforts.  In addition to achieving a wider reach for your content that results in more visits to your website, there are search engine optimization benefits.  Social media sites are now receiving top search engine listings so that even more people find your business when going to Google and other search engines to find your product or service.

So there is a plan for Social Media and there is a plan for Social Media Marketing.  Both plans should be worked on a daily basis.  There are optimal ways to do each, and we plan to cover that here on this blog.

Takeaway:   Social Media is sharing information online.  A business can participate by posting content in all kinds of creative ways to engage new people to the product or service that is represented – not to sell, but to use the social space on the internet to facilitate communication that will lead to sales.

Tomorrow’s topic is WHY Social Media.