Marketing on Internet Road 

There is no better strategy to achieve better reach, expanded coverage and enhanced brand awareness than social media marketing. Social media is by far the number one tool for engagement and interaction with your target audience. Now is the time to adapt to the already-changed online landscape and market your offerings through social networks, if you haven’t already started.

Social media allows any business to connect with people, reach potential customers faster than ever and strengthen relationships with existing customers and prospects.

Interested in learning how to leverage social networking for your own business?

The first action to take is to register on a social network and to create an account or a profile (depends on the network). Online networks are specifically designed to connect with others, so make the most out of this possibility.

Get on Facebook and set up a page for your company (important: not a personal profile!). Consider also setting up a group for your company. In case you have a specific niche you want to reach, set up a LinkedIn and/or Facebook group and invite current clients and other contacts to join. Make sure to publish regular (but valuable) content to that group.

Communities which are formed on the basis of shared ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ are great “entry points” into potential customers’ mind. This also helps in adding a human element to your product offering. Social networking sites enable you to get in touch with people who may be interested in your product or service, so make sure to take advantage of that.

To build your online brand reputation, which is becoming one of the most important factors online, focus your efforts on getting people to follow and endorse you through the various social networks..

To support all of your efforts, make sure to have a blog for your business. Blogging gives greater exposure to your business expertise and knowledge and could be information that people will value hence will engage with and share. You benefit as social media users gain awareness about your business and offerings and “syndicate” your words to other people they are connected with.

To help you engage with the online business community, here are some key social media best practices:

• Welcome Participation and Feedback - Let people talk to you. Developing relationships and communities within the social networks online can facilitate buy in, provide amazing feedback and business opportunities.
• Advise, Don’t Sell - Listen in to what is being said and offer expert advice. The simple rule here is the more you have to give, the more you get back. People who use social networking sites are sensitive by nature to sales pitches. So be the expert first, build trust, and then leverage your position to subtly 'recommend' your products or services.
• Be Visible and Credible - Establish yourself as an expert through regular blogging, tweeting and interacting on forums within your area of expertise.
• Listen and Respond - Don't participate in random conversations. Listen in on social networks, try to find out what is the online buzz, what your prospects need or are interested in. Then offer your opinion and custom solutions.

Use social networking to work your way into the hearts of potential as well as existing customers. Respect the tone and culture of the sites that you join and avoid being pushy. Share your knowledge and expertise, and very fast social networking will give you a good boost as you market your products or services online.

All over the globe, businesses have recognized Social Media Marketing as an exploding marketing strategy and are utilizing it to cultivate more returns from their marketing and strengthen their branding. Make sure you are active in this realm and with by that increase you lead generation efforts, drive results from your marketing and gain ROI.

Here are 4 tips to remember when it comes to content sharing:

Tip #1: Engage with Them – Engagement is a new and genuine form of “un-marketing”. Prospects, Influencers and Customers are already engaging with others to discover, learn and contribute. Aim at using engagement as a free, fast and powerful way to reach and serve.

Tip #2: Quality is more important than Quantity - Quality followers will engage with you, give you honest feedback and could even become your brand evangelists. Don’t fall into a trap like only counting the number of followers you have on Twitter.

Tip #3: Ensure it is Shareable, Searchable and Portable- Good quality content should be written in a way people can use. Stop assuming that content must be published only on your website and should be controlled completely by you. Help your audience download, embed or share it as they like.

Tip #4: You should Give to Get - Successful social media marketing strategies involve listening and participation. This implies providing value before expecting to get anything in return.

You should maximize the benefits you can get from social media. Those powerful networks are built to strengthen your online presence and bring you a lot of value.

The heart of any effective online presence is Content. What you need to look for is engagement, and if your content isn’t what it should be, your target audience won’t engage with it and therefore won’t engage with you they way you need them to. You should look for sharing of your content as much as possible via social networks. When this is done, people are being linked to your business.

To get things started, you first step you should take is to identify what type of content is interesting to your target audience. Only then, analyze which platforms (i.e. – which social networks) as well as which tools are going to give your content the best chance of being share and syndicated.

Track your social profiles to see what people like more and what is being ignored (or even disliked). You can even initiate discussions with your audience about various topics to understand why they prefer certain topics and not others.

To support your efforts, you should identify people and companies in iyour market and industry and follow them. Look at the content they publish and provide them with feedback. This could be a great way to provide them with a link to your content that is about similar topics and getting their feedback in return.

A relatively easy way to get started is with using your company’s videos and presentations on channels like YouTube and SlideShare. Video is considered a great tool for demonstrations and presentations to your target audience, and now you can make good use of the tons of presentations you have anyhow in the business and spread them for prospects to find online.

The first signal Google had sent to the online community in 2011 with its “Panda Update” was “Content”. The second signal from Google is “Social”, being delivered with Google’s new initiative of the “+1”.

Understanding the way the internet is consumed, Google has been adding social elements to its algorithm constantly and introduced the “social search” aspects as well as multiple ways to be able to enables searches to be connected with the social realm.

One of the best online resources, seomoz, published their findings on the way social factors affect ranking. It seems evident that the social authority of web pages and their domain are influencing their ranking. It is another clear indication of the importance Google is setting to what is happening on social networks.

At the end of March Google announced the new concept called “+!”. This is not really a revolutionary concept from Google and actually it’s an imitation of what is being available online for a while now (it is very much like FaceBook’s “Like” button, so nothing new here). However, the integration with search is new and should be looked at from a broad angle.

What is Google’s “+1”?

Google is adding to its search results an icon of “+1”. The idea is that anyone who wishes to share his/her positive attitude towards a web page on the search results could click on the icon, and with that, adding a “point” to this page.

Where is Google now with “+1”?

Google is currently focused only on integrating the “+1” into the search results. Similar to other updates they are introducing, it is rolled first in the US, then English sites globally and later globally. I suspect it will take couple of month (at least) before we see that all over.

But, Google intention is not to stop as only having the “+1” in the search results. Similar to the “Like” of Facebook, they wish to see their social icon integrated on websites and web pages. Another outcome Google is hoping to achieve is to create a social network around Google, using the Google Profile (which is where you need to opt-in for the “+!”).

What does the Google “+1” mean?

At this point, this initiative looks “half baked” and incomplete, or we just don’t know enough.

However, ignoring the arguments on whether Google will be able to compete with Facebook or not, we need to make sure we are reading behind the lines. In this case, the letters are big and bold: go social!

We suspect that by the end of 2011 the impact of your social graph on your ranking and overall traffic would be huge and actually the line between search and social when applying SEO work will disappear almost completely.

So, if you are not yet engaged in Social Media, start now. Invest in creating professional profiles for your business on some of the major social networks, get yourself engaged in some social networks to follow trends related to your business and thought leaders in your industry, and set cross references from your social profiles to your website and vice versa. Lastly, enable visitors to share your webpage on their social networks.


Don’t hold back on any comments. Feedback is more than welcome!

In the beginning of 2011 Google had introduced a major and substantial update to it search algorithm, known as the “Panda Update”. The update that started in North America in February was rolled out to all international English websites in April and is gradually rolled out to all languages globally.

What Does Google Really Want

The Effects of the Panda Update

What Google Signals with the Panda Update

What to do to succeed in the post-panda era?