Feb 23 2010
Why is Social Media Important?
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.
