Why is social media important?

With nearly 400 Million active users, Facebook is now the size of the country of Germany, and adding over 1/2 Million new users per day! Twitter is not as big but is also growing fast.  The phenomenal growth of these online giants ultimately reflects our compelling desire  to connect with each other around common interests. AND it presents a whole new paradigm for communicating and selling online.

The old distinctions of B to B and B to Consumers are not as meaningful anymore as everyone from the janitor on up to the CEO is on Facebook, swapping news and stories with friends. Ultimately, people do not buy from companies, they buy from people and social media can put a more informal, hip and personal face on an otherwise impersonal company.

As successful online marketers such as Frank Kern and Jeff Walker have discovered and proven with testing, folks hate to be sold to, but they love to buy from a trusted friend or advisor. I would add that they especially hate to be sold to by a huge, faceless, impersonal corporation, who doesn’t understand them or give a hoot about them. But give them true value for free via social media and other forms of  direct communication, building both trust AND desire, and they will LOVE to buy from you.

The True Value of Social Media

This is the true value of social media for your online presence. In an era of greater transparency and authenticity, social media is rapidly delivering a new standard of interacting more person to person, even if it’s just one person in your company who is chosen to be the active “face” in that realm. If you update a blog regularly, you can auto update both Facebook and Twitter from your blog posts, so it doen’t have to take a bunch of time. Don Crowther, social media guru, says a highly effective social media strategy can take just 20 minutes a day. NOTE: And you cannot, must not sell directly or blatantly spam your follows, or they will unfollow you quickly.

Getting started and doing it right does take some work, especially to standardize your brand across the big 3 social media sites – your face or brand needs to be consistent on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube and each site requires a bit of customization to achieve this.

Also, Facebook especially can do all sorts of cool tricks with their version of HTML called FBML, including a custom landing page for non-fans with your email opt-in form embedded.

See also Fantastic Facebook Pages for more on our Facebook Page design services.

WE CAN HELP! Kaizen Marketing social media services start at just $500 for a fully customized social media presence. Contact us to get started right away. Social media is important partly because it can help you present a human face to human buyers of your product or service to help you sell MORE of your product or service.

See also Facebook Ads – the new kid on the block is a serious competitor to Google adwords and can target demographics in ways Google cannot touch. Wanna show ads only to middle aged men in California whose favorite book is “Think and Grow Rich”? For just 50 cents per click? You can now do it. Within a few hours.

Call for a free consultation at 805-403-1128

Of course, I just also added this post to my Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin streams with one click using a handy service called Yoono – I recommend it. Use it to quickly send shortened URL sites with your comments to your friends.

In this example, Twitter and Facebook links hold an honored spot next to Authorize.Net.

search.twitter.com and www.twellow.com

In response to a growing demand, Kaizen Marketing is offering a new packaged service: the creation and customization of business and brand oriented Facebook Fan Pages.

Here’s what we do for you:

• Build the basic fan page connected to your personal FB account (or mine but yours is recommended)
• Create a personalized avatar graphic from your logo that shows up on your page and all your posts
• Tie in any blogs you may have via Facebook Notes – this will auto post all your blog posts from WordPress, Blogger or whatever directly to the Facebook page and to the feed of your page fans.
• Use the Facebook version of html (FBML) to custom create a sidebar under the fans area. This can include any graphics and links you wish out as well as an opt-in form for your email list, if you have one.
• Use FBML to create a custom landing page that only NON-FANS will see. This can be a large graphic or short video, following by an invite your friends box so that folks landing can become a fan and also invite their friends to do so right away. Once they are fans, they will go direct to the Wall. See ALL ONE Vitamins fan page for an example – and become a fan while there.
• Once have 25 fans, we help you apply for a custom, vanity URL of your choice (only one per Facebook) eg: here is another fan page I have produced with URL for Nutiva, now over 1500 fans: http://facebook.com/Nutiva/
  
• Assuming your chosen URL is available, you can start using it in your marketing.
• Optional: if you have any videos on Youtube, we will help add a custom tab up top that will display your YouTube channel.
• Optional: we will help you install the “Fan Box” widget on your own site, which shows recent updates and a sampling of your fans, and allows folks to become a fan directly from your site.
• Lastly, we provide a “10 ways to build your fan page” special report to help with strategy and best practices for using and building your Facebook Fan Page.

The price for all of the above is $397, about half of what competitors are charging for similar services. You can use the Paypal button below to order now and contact us with your details so we can get to work for you! Or contact us to pay by check, if you prefer.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc are all the buzz but is this more than a good story?

Is it a big waste of time, or the next big thing we should pay attention to, like the web itself 10 years ago?

I personally think there IS a lot of hype, and can be a time suck, but a lot of potential and promise too. Like many of you, I have reconnected with old pals on Facebook and found some new customers on Twitter. I have friends come up to me to say they heard me singing with the dog Bo on YouTube. It’s a whole new world. (search YouTube for “You Gotta Howl” to watch)

Continue reading Social Media Money System Review.

More business oriented than Facebook, Twitter provides a way to build a following, nurture relationships with those followers, and potentially land new customers. One of the more prolific Twitter users, Guy Kawasaki of All-Top fame, has called Twitter.com “a weapon”, and for good reason. Used correctly, it can be the most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.

To learn how to build a large targeted following fast, see: MoneyInSocialMedia.com, my new blog dedicated to anwwering that question: Is there money in social media? I hope to answer that most clearly in the affirmative.

• Coveted 18 to 34 age group spends 4.3 x amount of time on Social Media as TV, newspapers and other media COMBINED
• Folks ARE still reading but reading blogs rather than books – 13 Million active blogs and more than 5B readers
• Out of $50B TV ads last year – 8% now moved to Youtube and net video  will get MUCH higher
• Facebook adds 240K users per Day! That’s a mid sized city – per day!
• Facebook has 140 M active users – almost doubled in last 12 months, much faster than Google added members
• Time spent on Facebook increased by 566% from December 2007 to December 2008, compared to around 18% for the web overall.
• And in the UK, Facebook is used by a staggering 47% of the online population!

More Popular Than Email!

Nielsen Online recently issued a report that showed that two-thirds of the world’s internet population visited social networking or blogging sites, and that these sites accounted for 10% of total internet time. In fact, social media has become more popular than email! According to the data that Nielsen analyzed, the popularity of social media is only going to increase during the coming years. See the stats above for evidence of that.

Facebook Grows While MySpace Drops

On Nielsen’s figures, its global audience of 108.3m users each month is equivalent to 30% of the world’s web users. That reach grew 168% through 2008 alone, while arch-rival MySpace saw its global audience drop by 3% to 81 million monthly users.

Nielsen credits Facebook’s growth to simple design, broad appeal, better privacy controls and more inventive features than its rivals. But crucially, despite its popularity, Facebook’s focus on communication over entertainment makes it a less comfortable sell for advertising – even though its fastest growing userbase has been the older, more valuable 35-49 age group.

As Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank said “Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience. While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing.”

People are already spending more time and becoming increasingly engaged with social networking sites – across the globe, time spent on social media sites accounts for one in every eleven online minutes. Furthermore, the audience is starting to shift – although social networking and online communities are typically thought of as something for young people, as their popularity grows and they become more mainstream, their audience becomes older and demographically broader.

Dive into the Twitter and Facebook Stream

So, if your company is not involved in social media yet, what are you waiting for? It is no longer just for college kids swapping party stories or just a trendy option that might drive some sales, it is an essential part of doing business.

And while you are here, follow me on Twitter. Don’t yet have a Twitter account? Get one now and claim all the names you need for your business too. (each account will need its own email address)

Know you need this but don’t have time? Let the Social Media experts at Kaizen Marketing help set up and manage an effective presence for you. If social media is now more popular than email, don’t get left behind on this massive wave of a new form of communication.

And, for the very latest news from Facebook on the new interface and page structure, see these:

Facebook offers a “tour” of the new Homepage here.

Check out the new Facebook Pages design in a PDF they offer here.