How do you stand apart from other businesses in your market?
Businesses are increasing their social network activity in 2009 and even more will in 2010 says an article on Mashable.Com. Conferences are popping up all over the map teaching best practices and offering solutions, but what solution and social network would work best for your company? The other big question is how to be active on social networks with out killing your daily productivity or resort to hiring someone to do it for you?
Stop pouring advertising dollars into mediums that have lost their audience!
I do not consider myself a social networking consultant because anybody can be that today. What I do consider myself is someone who has found a way to make it work for himself and his business. If you or your business is looking to find the best way to attack the social networking monster, I would love share with you how it has worked for me and how I do it.
The traditional marketing techniques of years past are almost dead. The phone book is no longer the best option. Having a great website is no longer the best option. In Commercial Real Estate the term I always heard was “Location, Location, Location!” The same is true with the web, you need to be located where most traffic takes place. Does that make sense? If the masses are spending their time in social networks, your business needs to be there.
You are probably wondering why you would need to connect with people on social networks. Nobody wants to know when I am going to the store or what I ate for dinner? Social Networks are much more then that. Social Networks give you a voice that can be heard by those who are looking to connect with others who have interests similar to them. Users subscribe to updates from companies that provide products and services they like each day. How much more effective would it be to allow the customer to chose what advertisement streams they want to hear about? Let’s look at some examples of where people are spending their time.
In the graph below Yellowpages.Com, Facebook.com and Twitter.Com are compared. Look at the traffic differences. Where do you want your business to be displayed and shared with views?
Facebook has over 100 Million unique visitors per day. Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds with over 25 Million unique visitors per day. If your phone book, local newspaper, radio station or direct mail marketing company can offer you that large of a market at the low introductory price of FREE, please let me know. Below I will go into more detail as to why Social Network Marketing is the new way to meet customers.
Who am I to give advice on Social Network Marketing? Grader.Com lists me as the Top User in my community, Modesto, CA on Twitter.com
Do a Google search for my name. Many of the results that will come up are social network profiles that I have in place. These profiles point back to my business website and drive traffic to my website. Take a look at the image below which displays the traffic by source that my website receives. A large portion of my traffic is due to my social network activity.
The image below displays more details in regards to where the market is going. Facebook and Twitter are on the rise while Yellowpages is falling. If you add up all of the traffic my website receives, the sum of the traffic referred by the social networks is greater than the traffic Google provides me. Feel free to run the same Compare.Com report I did, click here.
Now lets switch out Yellowpages.Com for Google and compare the traffic growth between the two major social networks and Google. You will notice that Google, although far in #1 is not experiencing growth as rapidly as the other social networks. What does that tell you about where people are going? Twitter.Com is currently experiencing 1100% growth. Feel free to run the same Compare.Com report I did, click here.
The numbers are overwhelmingly exciting to me as a business owner. People are flocking to a space where I can access and gain the attention of potential customers for free. You should be asking yourself why you have not jumped on this boat.
Feel free to contact me, I would love to help you figure out how to market your business using the up and coming social web. Another resource I offer is my blog. As new and exciting solutions for arise I discuss them on my blog. From the menu above, mouse over blog and choose a category.