Ron Packer, Social Media Expert presented an educational overview on How Businesses Can Take Their Marketing to the Next Level through the use of Social Media. 

Folsom, California, May 6, 2011– Hundreds of business owners and marketing professionals from around the world attended a digital marketing webinar hosted by WSI, the world’s #1 Internet Franchise. The webinar was conducted by Ron Packer, a respected Internet Marketing Consultant based in California and was titled “Social Media Marketing: The Art of Conversational Sales”.

“Social media marketing is the most asked about and least understood of new marketing concepts from the Internet”, says Ron Packer, Internet Marketing Consultant. “Almost every business is asking what is it and do I need to be using social media in my business, or they have jumped on to the bandwagon but really don’t have an effective plan on how to best use social media or even how to measure the success or failure of a social media marketing strategy. The key is to understand that social media marketing is part of the bigger marketing picture, and that it is clearly focused in engaging your target market in real, honest conversations on topics that are of interest to them. We are seeing a tremendous growth in social networking across all age groups and more of these customers expect the businesses they do business with to have a presence on the appropriate social sites. During my presentation, I discussed how a business can leverage these digital media technologies to take their marketing efforts to the next level.”

To read the full press release, click here. 

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So, what do you do with those business videos and business images that you have been taking for your products or services? Well, a great tool in creating an effective Internet Marketing strategy is use those videos on your website and in your Social Media Marketing portals. So, how do you do that?

• Do share appropriate business related videos and/or images on your company website, blog and the various video sites (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
• Do try and optimize any videos you upload with relevant keywords (title tags, video descriptions, etc.)
• Don't upload inappropriate pictures to your gallery or photo album
• Don't create a company video without a standard company branded title and end slide
• Don't use copyrighted material (videos or images) without the owners written permission

In developing an effective Internet Marketing strategy you need to consider how to build a credible and successful online community. Here are a few key points to consider in planning for and implementing your online marketing strategy.

• Do build your community with your business contacts (i.e., business associates, past and current colleagues, partners and customers).
• Do ensure your are engaging yourself in other people's social networks.
• Do follow or add business contacts to your community that chose to connect with you.
• Do email your customer database and encourage them to follow or add you on the social portals.

Of course, there are a few points to avoid.

• Don't mix your personal contacts (friends and family) with your business contacts. Keep a separate profile for personal use.
• Don't assume people will find you. Actively search for social network users relevant to your company.
• Don't neglect to manage your followers. Block those that are not business appropriate.
• Don't forget to include the social icons and "follow me" links in all of your marketing materials.

We are pleased to announce the release of our latest website for Lennen Construction of Stockton California. Lennen Construction needed not just a new and updated website, they needed a website that could store large project documents online for their sub-contractors to download easily and at anytime of the day or night. Now, when I say large, we are talking documents up to 200mb. So, WSI provided the staff of Lennen Construction a website that they can self-manage and looks great. Take a look for yourself at www.lennenconstruction.com.

If you are just starting with an Internet Marketing plan or are beginning to expand in to Social Media Marketing, then you know there are a tremendous amount of choices, which make it difficult to decide how and where to start. So, my recommendation is the same that I would give for any business decision; “define the goals you want to accomplish in your social strategy.” For example, if you want to connect with existing and potential customers online and provide quick updates about your company, then Twitter and Facebook are a great place to start because of their ability to instantly push messages to a community. If you want to educate customers by posting regular articles, then creating a blog should be an early priority. If you have video commercials you can publish, then YouTube would be a preferred portal.

The key is to go where your audience is most active. This varies depending upon your industry, and the specific goals of your business. However, in general you can determine the relative priority of social media portals based upon the nature of your industry. A few industry examples would include (with the priority of the portals listed):

Professional Services: blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr

Manufacturing: blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr

Retail: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, Flickr, LinkedIn

Real Estate: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, Flickr, LinkedIn

That is just a sample of industries and is based upon the experiences of leading WSI Consultants throughout the world. If you would like to discuss which portals may be best suited for your company, send us an email or give us a call and we can make a quick recommendation.

As you have probably guessed or figured out, there are an ever increasing number of social portals. Over time, some will become significant (as we have seen with Twitter and Facebook) and others will fade out as being insignificant. However, if you are beginning to direct your Internet Marketing efforts to include Social Media (which you should be doing) then there are five key social media portals you should know and use. These five include; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and YOUR Blog (there are lots of different platforms you can use).

 

Twitter: This portal focuses on brief messages or updates of 140 characters or less. The Twitter challenge is one where single postings are largely ignored. To effectively use Twitter you need to repeat your postings more than once to even be heard on a minimal level for an effective ROI. This portal is the most difficult to maintain and will demand a large amount of time for such a limited space, but with help this can be a huge boon to your Internet Marketing goals.

LinkedIn: This is an all business portal that is organized like an online Rolodex. The LinkedIn portal is a great connector for businesses of all types. You need to use the Q&A section frequently to be noticed and you must establish yourself as a proven expert (the network easily discovers fakes and wanna-be’s). This can be a very valuable portal, but needs to be maintained with good business content to help your Internet Marketing efforts.

Facebook: This portal is focused on creating personal connections and loves games. This portal has a higher than average tolerances for times between updates, but grows extremely well if daily updates of interest to a community are made on a routine basis. From an Internet Marketing perspective this social portal has significant opportunities to help grow your business.

YouTube: This portal is all about videos. When you first start, this portal requires little maintenance with a video posting a month being a reasonable strategy. As you achieve success you will need to increase the amount of content. Videos are an excellent addition to your Internet Marketing strategy and YouTube is an important component of that strategy.

Blogs:  This portal is a specialized type of website or a component of your existing website. From an internet Marketing perspective, it is much like Twitter in that you need to provide regular and frequent updates to your content. The biggest difference here is that you need to do a lot more content than on Twitter’s limit of 140 characters. Readers subscribe to blogs primarily because they find value in the postings, so this portal needs content focused around specific subject matters.

For businesses looking to establish an effective Sacramento Internet Marketing strategy, these portals provide a valuable resource for competing on a regional or a national basis.

Ok, I thought I would start with how to choose the right social portal for your industry. However, as I gave the topic of “what is social media” a little more thought I decided we should cover some general guidelines on how to use social media in Internet Marketing. Now, these are general guidelines and if you need more specifics feel free to ask a question or do some online research. Finally, remember that every social media platform has its own rules and regulations and you should check them out as you start to dive in to marketing with social media.

So, here we go…..

1. Be Transparent. Be honest in social media, dishonest statements or comments will be quickly noticed in the social media environment. If you are talking about your company, products or services use your real name and tell people you are representing the company.
2. Be Judicious. Make certain you know what you are talking about in your conversations. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a very long time.
3. Write about what you know.  When you write, write in the first person and write about your area of expertise. Remember to respect your company brand, trademarks, copyright, fair use, trade secrets, confidentiality, and financial disclosure laws. Remember, in the end you are responsible for your content.
4. Perception is Reality. When participating in online social networks, the lines between public and private, personal and professional are vague and can be confusing. Be certain that all of the content associated with you is consistent with your business, business image, values and professional standards.
5. It’s a Conversation. Talk to your readers like you would talk to real people in professional situations. Your personality, just like at work, should be a part of your conversation.
6. Are you Adding Value? There are billions of words and conversations in the Internet. The only way you will get your content read is to write about things that people value. It should be thought provoking and help build a sense of community.
7. It is Your Responsibility. What you write is ultimately your responsibility, so be thoughtful before you put it out there.
8. Be a Leader. Try to frame what you write in such a way that you invite differing points of view without inflaming others. Remember there is a fine line between a healthy debate and inappropriate reaction.
9. Did you Make a Mistake? If you do make a mistake, admit it and be quick with a correction.
10. If it gives you a pause, then take a deep breath before Posting. If you are about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, don’t shrug it off. Take some time to determine what is bothering, or ask for some unbiased opinions. Once you publish, you can’t take it back.

So, next we will discuss how to choose the right portals for your industry. If you have any comments or suggestions to add or challenge what I have written, please post your comments so we can discuss.

You know that Internet Marketing is about pulling people to you and your company by creating and maintaining appropriate content on your website, and you most likely know and have talked with experts about how to conduct Search Engine Marketing. But do you know what and how to conduct Social Media Marketing? That is one of the most asked questions I get from prospective clients, current clients and just interested professionals. In a nutshell, Social Media Marketing is creating a conversation with people who would be interested in buying your products or services. So how do you get started and what do you need to do to create and maintain an effective Social Media Marketing program? Over the next few weeks, I will be addressing what I consider to be the most effective strategies and Social Media portals that you should consider using to market your business online.

It is still true that businesses need to ensure every penny spent produces demonstratable results. That is one of the primary reasons businesses are transitioning to a heavier reliance upon the web to meet their marketing needs. More and more budget is being allocated to Internet marketing because it’s measurable and has proven to increase ROI.

As always, 2009 has provided a greater assortment of Internet marketing methods with the most effective strategies focusing on establishing credibility and trust (people only buy from companies that they trust) and directing your marketing to target a specified and correct demographic for your product or service.

Credibility, as advocated by Internet Marketing experts at WSI, depends on how well a site is designed and built, how many quality websites link to your website, how much social media and buzz surrounds your domain, how fast a website loads, how unique and substantial your website’s content is, and how fast your website is growing and changing.

Based on these observations, what do we see as the Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2010? Well, here we go:

1.   Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Web sites in the top of the search results are viewed as the leaders of their industry, and more than 80 percent of Web users click on the first listings. Good SEO will consistently deliver a huge return on investment.
2.   Keyword Research – Everything revolves around discovering what words, phrases and content your customers are searching for online.
3.   Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn – Social media marketing engages customers on a personal level, and can rapidly create buzz around a product, brand or business. 
4.   Video Marketing – This is becoming more important both on-site and off-site. Videos help convert website visitors into sales. In universal search results, people tend to click on links with videos more than those without – even if the video link is ranked lower and you also can tap into the power of www.youtube.com  and www.tubemogel.com
5.   Online Public Relations – This builds credibility online, in the mainstream media and for potential customers. Online public relations, providing you write it correctly for an on-line medium using relevant keywords, can help create lots of buzz about your site through bloggers and industry sites, and can help boost organic SEO.
6.   Link Building – From the search engine’s point of view, a credible and popular website has lots of links pointing to it. This helps your rankings provided you managing an appropriate linking strategy.
7.   Blogging – Blogs provide additional site content (which search engines love), graphics and other viral content to disseminate information and tie in with social media. Blogs can build your credibility by establishing your website as a hub for industry information.
8.   Web Design, incorporating persuasion architecture – A good website design will keep visitors on your site and help sell your products or services. After all, it is still all about a website that is easy to navigate, has good persuasion architecture and in the end works for you.
9.   Paid Search Marketing – Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an extremely targeted tactical strategy using Google and Facebook with measurable, immediate results that can be reduced as your organic search strategy begins to engage. 
10.   Email Marketing – Nurture relationships and retain existing customers. It’s much easier to keep old customers than to get new ones. Send good offers and valuable information that’s customized to their needs.

If these strategies are properly developed and implemented, you should expect to have unparalleled success with your Internet marketing program. This success is based upon a combination of all these strategies to drive traffic to your site, establish credibility for your brand and convert traffic into sales,

WSI is an Internet Marketing helps businesses throughout Sacramento and Northern California by driving traffic to their websites through aggressive search engine optimization, paid search marketing, social media marketing and blogging. WSI then turns those visitors into sales through conversion-focused website design, development and copywriting. Clients range from small startups to large corporate companies.