Kaizen Internet Marketing Santa Barbara

More and more, popular icons for the top social media sites are showing up under such standards as the search site box. And Facebook widgets are ever more common that allow you to become a fan of a brand or business directly from your website. Suddenly, everyone is talking about social marketing. Is it a fad? Is it hype? Is it worth the trouble? I’m going to tell you right now why it IS important and why your business may depend on getting it right. See also: Fantastic Fan Pages

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.

Tags: adwords, communicate, criticism of facebook, customization, Facebook, facebook features, media services, online social networking, paradigm, sell online, social information processing, true value, web 2.0, why social media

I’ve been involved in internet marketing, sales and social media for a while now and here’s my take on it:

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.

Tags: Facebook, social media, social media money system, twitter

Nielsen Online recently released a report showing that Social Media is now more popular than email. Check these amazing stats on Social Media:

• 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.

Tags: email usage, Facebook, linkedin, more popular than email, new facebook design, Nielsen Online report, social media, social media stats, statistics on social media, twitter

These rough notes are from an excellent webinar by Perry Belcher. The growth and potential of social media is staggering. Check these stats and some expert advise on using Twitter and Facebook. If you have not yet joined Twitter, by all means do so and follow me at http://twitter.com/waynemarshall

18 to 34 age group spend 4.3 x time on Social media as TV, newspapers and other media combined!

Facebook adds 240K users per Day! PER DAY!

FB has 140 M active users
almost doubled in last 12 months – grew much faster than Google in adding users.

out of $50B TV ads – 8% now moved to Youtube and internet video  – soon it will be much higher

folks are still reading but they are reading blogs – 13 Million active blogs and more than 5B readers

Dont try to be “professional” – not company to person but person to person

spend 30 minutes a day – have fun
Social Media like party be cool – make friends
blog like house and should be 80% about you and 20% about what you do – get to the back porch – this is where you sell stuff – folks will  come to you.

follow every follower that are following folks you like
many will follow you back

find your twitter style
tweet at your leisure – should be fun.

compliment them
confirm their suspicions – news
support their dreams
ally their fears – tell them its ok
throw stones at enemies – (Delta Airlines)
give resources
be funny or borrow funny – youtube video
ask questions – even when you answer
answer your @’s dont be a twitter snob

Follow @perrybelcher for more of this great stuff and check his followers – 59,000! Not sure how he can possibly keep up with 59k folks to follow but there you go. I know he made a bundle recently with just one little twitter post about a certain big product launch. And if you have 1000′s of folks listening to what you have to say, that is powerful.

I am certainly encouraged by this to keep working social media in the right way – not being one of the too quick to sell jerks he talks about – but someone who  gives real value in my work and folks will listen and eventually, buy my stuff, as Frank Kern  likes to say.

Tags: Facebook, social media, twitter, youtube