April 2009 Monthly Newsletter :: Anduro Marketing
The general objective of any social networking strategy should be to build an online community of people who are interested in your company and what you do/have to offer. The value in developing this community is that “members” or “participants” are more likely to buy from you, or act as a referral, if they are engaged on a regular basis and feel that they are a part of your community – a sense of belonging is important.
Social Networking Sites and Tools
Although there are literally hundreds of social networking sites/portals, only a few have proven to have a business-to-business application. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking
LinkedIn is a great B2B tool and the de facto professional social networking site. With more than 39 million members in over 200 nations worldwide, LinkedIn has been largely responsible for destroying the myth that social networking was just for teenagers with too much time on their hands. It now ranks as one of the world's top recruitment sources while providing an effective vehicle for global professional networking. For a great overview of LinkedIn's potential value, try reading Guy Kawasaki’s article, “Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn”.
To ensure successful use of LinkedIn, create a company profile and, ideally, have everyone in your company create a personal profile. Be sure to review Applications for tools that may be of value; Company Buzz and Polls are two that can be leveraged quite well. There are always many organizations promoting their events or posting surveys (links to www.surveymonkey.com). Of course, two of LinkedIn’s most popular features are the job postings and Q&A forums.
Popularized most recently by Ashton Kutcher's challenge to CNN, Twitter, a micro-blogging service, is fast becoming the Web 2.0 story of 2009. The site's traffic has increased dramatically in recent months, with Yahoo reporting that searches for Twitter have grown more than 5,000 percent over the same time last year. Twitter allows users to type "tweets" of 140 characters or less on their computers or cell phones, which others "follow" on Twitter like a stock ticker.
Twitter made its first real breakthrough during the last U.S. presidential election campaign, but more recently it has been passionately adopted in the business world. For example, it’s been reported that Dell generated more than $1 million over the Christmas holidays through Twitter exclusive offers. You can follow Dell at http://twitter.com/DellOutlet or http://twitter.com/Direct2Dell.
To learn more about Twitter, start by reading David Miller’s article, “What Keeps Twitter Chirping Along”. View this video about Dell’s Twitter strategy and have a look at Tony Hsieh’s article called “A Beginner’s Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter”. Despite initial skepticism, and as illustrated by Dell and others, Twitter can be used to create business value but warnings of its addictive nature are rampant.
The rapid growth of social networking utilities has prompted the creation of additional applications that act as accessories, such as URL shorteners like Bit.ly and TinyURL. Users and select either of these tools to create a shortened version of a URL they wish to post elsewhere (e.g. www.companyname.com/content/sessionid?=17&contentid=5 becomes http://tinyurl.com/uniform). This is particular useful for Twitter and other character limited applications on the social web. Compare recent market share and value estimates of various URL shorteners at TechCrunch.com.
It's hard to find anyone online these days, certainly in North America, that hasn't heard of Facebook. What they may not know, however, is that the world's largest social networking site is becoming a great B2C tool, though there seems to be less opportunity for B2B applications. New features such as Beacon and Facebook Connect allow users to communicate with their network from all over the Web while it's constantly growing stable of 3rd party applications provides an ongoing source of unique business opportunities.
Once you’ve created a personal profile, setting up a business profile or “page” takes a matter of minutes. Once done you can explore Facebook’s distinctive and highly targeted pay-per-click advertising options (known as Social Ads) and the accompanying Insight analytics tool. Of course, as with all social networking sites, the key is that you have to “work it” – make regular updates, explore different applications, keep in contact with your community, and so on. To learn more about how Facebook continues to grow, particularly outside of North America, read this article on ReadWriteWeb.com.
Jigsaw is an employer survey portal targeted to sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals looking to build their contacts database or research specific contacts by a range of demographic and industry information. Jigsaw is a free online directory of company information and business contacts. The information provided is comprehensive, including direct phone lines and email addresses. Similar to Wikipedia, Jigsaw members are responsible for building and maintaining the database. Though relatively new on the scene, Jigsaw boasts a roster of 12 million business contacts.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking started as a method for Internet users to store and manage their Web bookmarks or favorites but their value has expanded. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking. Much like URL shorteners, social bookmarking has evolved as a reaction to the increased use of social networking sites. It also serves a very practical purpose by allowing users to access their bookmarks from anywhere or any online computer in the world.
Now, many social bookmarking services allow subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks that have been saved, shared, and tagged by other users. Sites in this category often operate on promotion by popular votes and include digg.com, reddit.com, newsvine.com, delicious.com, furl.net, and stumbleupon.com (a company started in Calgary). Although social bookmarking is a great idea on its own, it requires time and effort to realize actual business value - most often associated with public relations or push forms of marketing.
Blogging Campaigns
Apart from maintaining your own business blog, another approach related to social networking is developing a campaign targeted to bloggers. There are millions of bloggers and many of them appreciate ideas from companies that are offering new products, services, or ideas. A blogging campaign involves researching blogs to identify the best (i.e. relevance, traffic, etc.) ones to approach. One way to start discovering those blogs is to visit blog directories, of which technorati.com is a well-known example.
The next step is to contact each of the bloggers with a suggestion for a posting related to their blog. Often a writer is best engaged to develop the posting for the blogger but the result can be a spark that ignites some buzz about your product or company. Alternatively, some blogs will include a link back to your website, which has value from a web visibility perspective. We can help you by suggesting worthwhile stories and giving good content to the bloggers – helping them develop good posts for their readers. You can visit our Search Engine Marketing blog for more information.
Event Marketing
If your company has a workshop, training session, public relations event or product launch, then you may want to use popular event sites to promote it. National sites in this category include www.eventful.com, www.kijiji.com, www.eventbrite.com, www.foundlocally.com, and www.backpage.com. There are, however, many local sites that will accept postings for events. In Calgary, these include www.discovercalgary.com, www.calgaryarea.com, http://thiscity.com/, http://www2.canada.com/cityguides/calgary/index.html, http://www.downtowncalgary.com/events/index.php and others. A quick search on Google will reveal additional sites for companies looking to post their events online.
Summary
This newsletter was designed to provide an initial outline for developing a social networking strategy for your business. While a number of utilities have become Web superstars, some challenges remain. Issues relating to privacy, in particular, have stolen some of the spotlight. Additionally, most of these tools have yet to produce a successful model of monetization. Finally, while there are some who claim that social networking amounts to nothing more than the latest fad, the exponential growth in tools, traffic, and users seem to provide their own strong argument. Businesses with a carefully crafted strategy can take advantage of the unique opportunities and benefits social networking presents.
The bottom line is that social networking offers a great deal of potential business value, but that it takes a focused, ongoing effort to fully realize it. This requires time and effort but the rewards may prove to be significant if you have products and services that people are buying or looking to buy. One of the biggest values of any marketing campaign is increasing brand awareness, and there is no question that social networking can help in this regard. Moreover, if you’re willing to put in the effort over the long term, your revenues will increase.
Anduro Marketing has the experience and insight to help your business leverage the power of social networking effectively through the development of a customized social networking strategy.
For more information on any of the products available from Anduro Marketing, contact us at info@anduro.com or (403) 410-3803.
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