Social media is the new buzzword for all businesses, both online and
offline. If you are strictly an online business owner, you know all about the
following terms (or you should!). I don't care if you're a Real Estate agent, a
winery owner or someone looking to build an online home business (like mine here), you better know the
following terms:
Social Media
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Animoto
etc
If you are strictly an offline business and think you don't need to know
these terms then you are leaving a lot of money on the table. You might even be an
offline business that is thinking about this whole social media thing but don't know where
to start.
My social marketing business solution shows business owners how to
integrate their offline business with this online social media phenomenom to build a
social marketing business model for your offline (or online) business.
First, some definitions:
Social Media - Social media are media for social interaction, using
highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses web-based
technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues (Wikipedia.com)
Twitter - Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc.,
which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and
read other users' messages called tweets (Wikipedia.com)
Facebook - Facebook is a social network service and website launched in
February 2004 that allows users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends
and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile
(Wikipedia.com)
Six Degrees of Separation - Six degrees of separation (also referred to
as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away
from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend"
statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer (Wikipedia.com)
Facebook & YouTube Statistics:
Facebook has over 500 Million users and is growing rapidly.
50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day (thats OVER 200 million!)
People spend over 500 Billion Minutes Per Month on Facebook
The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
More than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on external websites every
month
More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes,
etc.) are shared on facebook alone each month.
More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, NBC and CBS had
been airing new content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 365 days a year since 1948!
The number of unique visitors ABC, NBC & CBS get every month collectively is 10
million (they have been around for a combined 200 years)! The number of unique visitors
MySpace, YouTube, Facebook get every month collectively is 250 Million! None of these
sites even existed 6 years ago!
There are over 300 more Social Media sites and more being added everyday!
OK, this is all well and good but what does it mean to me as a
business owner. Well, if you're an offline bricks and mortor business owner you know
you need traffic to your store to make sales. That's a no brainer. Did you
know that you can use online marketing to drive traffic to your website, which should be
an extension of your offline business.
You don't have a website? I am affiliated with a web hosting company
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And once you have a website ... you HAVE to make it mobile! Why?
What Is Social Marketing
Social Marketing is a combination of social media (facebook and twitter)
and your business website and is the key to driving online traffic to your offline
business. You must get a facebook account (free at www.Facebook.com)
and have it linked to your business website (and your business website should also be
linked to your facebook and twitter websites). The facebook account is where your
friends and customers can be "connected" to you and receive timely information
about you and your products.
The link between your facebook and business website is very important. In
the definition above we saw that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person
on Earth. If someone who went to your facebook liked what they saw and
"friended" you, they might send the link to a friend of theirs. Then if
that person "friends" you, you have effectively moved outside your sphere of
influence ... you are moving in degrees of separation.
Let's say you own a winery in Prince Edward County. People from
Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto visit the County year round and you hope they stop by your
winery and purchase some of your great wine. You then give them a business card with
your website on it and say that you will ship wine to them if they want. But this
only works if they stop at your winery in the first place.
Now, how do you get people to your business website and/or facebook page
if they don't happen to stop by in the first place? Twitter! The definition
above barely scratches the surface when it comes to business. This one from
Webtrends.com is much better:
"What is Twitter? It is many different things to many different people. It can be
used by a family to keep in touch, or a company to coordinate business, or the media to
keep people informed or a writer to build up a fan base.
Twitter is micro-blogging. It is social messaging. It is an event coordinator, a
business tool, a news reporting service and a marketing utility."
Twitter (free account at www.Twitter.com)
is a lot of things ... but mostly it is a traffic monster! There could be millions
of wine drinkers that never get to your winery; how do you reach them? You use
Twitter. You could spend hours searching for people that talk about wine on twitter
and "follow" them in the hopes that they will "follow" you back and
learn about your winery. Or, you could automate the process by using the software
below.
I have used this software personally and in a few short months I have almost
10,000 followers on Twitter. I send out messages about wine (also totally automated)
and people follow me. I have links on Twitter to my website and I get traffic everyday.
I am not selling a product so I do not utilize the facebook portion of this
marketing process. If a business follows this process, the twitter profile would
list the facebook website to drive traffic there.
So, what does this twitter software do? Click the link below and be
prepared to be amazed!
This software could get literally thousands of followers (targeted by city
and/or wine) to your business website through your facebook page. Then these new
"friends" on facebook could pass on your link for even more traffic!
Other ways to get traffic to your website is by using video. If a
picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million words! You can make
videos and post them to YouTube. You can then use the code that YouTube gives you
and post those videos on Twitter as well as Facebook!
If you don't know how to make a video (go ask your 12 year old!!) then
make a video using just photo's. You don't need any software and you don't need any
expreience. Animoto does it all. Click Here to discover an incredible
tool that can make stunning videos with just photo's that you probably already have!
Here's a video I made using Animoto ... turn up your speakers!
Social online marketing for local offline business does
work and there are tools to make it more user friendly and automated. Social
marketing is merely the use of social media to promote your product or service. You
promote it every day when someone comes into the store, now you can promote it to anyone,
anywhere ... that's the power we're talking about here!
And just announced ... a new Social Media marketing concept that is aiming
to connect MILLIONS of customers to local businesses! Businesses need more customers
and customers want great deals. www.TheCustomerAdvantage.info
... This will be huge. Go now and sign up for free!
