In 2011, social media marketing outgrew its image of simply being a medium for people to share what they are doing and who they are doing it with, and expanded to gain widespread acceptance as a marketing tool and brand builder for businesses. But despite reading about social media every time you turned on your computer or TV, or looked at a newspaper, effective marketing and branding for most businesses through this medium remains elusive.

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The explosion of social media platforms is unprecedented. And it can be daunting! Numbers of social media and social networking sites, combined with numbers of users on these sites can become mind-numbing. The best thing about this trend is that everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon; the worst thing about this trend is that everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon. With over 400 social media and networking sites in existence at any given time, how do you know which of them to utilize? The trend-setting monolith, Facebook, boasts over 750 million users globally. Twitter claimed over 300 million users in 2011 and generated over 1.6 billion search queries. October 2011 saw YouTube attain a record 20 billion video views. LinkedIn, the platform that favors more of a networking approach for business professionals, had 119 million members worldwide as of July 2011. And that’s just statistics for the top 4 sites!

So what does this mean for your business? What should you do, and which sites should you turn to? Should you blog? How often should you blog? What about search engine optimization and search engine marketing? How do you know what to do yourself and what to outsource? And once you’ve decided what to outsource, who do you trust to help with your social presence?

To make a well informed decision about your social media marketing, it is imperative that you have a clear plan for your business and, likewise, are clear on what you are expecting to achieve from a social media campaign. Are you looking for sales? What about increasing brand recognition? Do you want to obtain customer/client loyalty and do you seek to make them your advocates? Perhaps you are looking for a more immediate, personal way to create dialogue with your clients and prospects. Or, you may even be looking to refute some bad publicity and require some reputation management assistance.

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One of the biggest issues for social media marketing to overcome is an effective way to measure return on investment (ROI). Marketing departments in many cases are hard-pressed to convince their CEO’s that social media is a good investment when the CEO’s are looking for quick results on their balance sheets. Although several companies have developed some metrics to track social media results, solid measurement methods remain intangible for the most part. For this reason, it is important to reflect on your goals for a social media campaign. To measure results from social media simply in terms of dollars and cents is extremely limiting and short-sighted when weighed against additional numerous benefits.

This will be an exciting year for the evolution of social media. As it grows from a gangly, impulsive teenager to a more thoughtful young adult, this medium will undeniably become a marketing force to be reckoned with. Expect to see less frenetic activity and more thoughtful processes this year as the site developers and business users become clearer on the most beneficial way to integrate a social media program into mainstream marketing. Just as the website was the way of the future of businesses in the past, ensuring that you are being seen in the ever-expanding social paradigm of the digital world will be critical. Make sure that your business is in a position to hear what your clients and prospects are saying about you, and use these new tools to respond in an appropriate and timely fashion.

Probably one of the biggest changes that occurred was the latest Google search algorithm updates. The dreaded Google Panda. This has definitely influenced web syndication in a huge way. It’s become much, much harder for web sites to spam their way to the top of Google. The interesting thing about the Panda update, is that it’s been pretty much ongoing. Many small changes. But the end effect is hopefully a better search experience for users. Unfortunately the dark side is when the spammers figure out how to rig the system with these updates, then things will change again.

Another pretty big change is the fact that search engines may soon be sharing more and more of the share of web traffic with social platforms. Companies like Google have ignored the likes of Facebook, but when they emerged with their new social platform, Google +, it definitely eluded to the fact that Google is feeling the Facebook influence.

Facebook is another site that has gone under dramatic change. They are turning into more and more of a Web 2.0 site look and feel, in my opinion. They are still a platform for chat and contact with others in your circle, but they are influencing more and more of a web blog feel. Business has also found a home in Facebook in 2011. The influence of business within Facebook is sooner or later going to spur new pay-for business services.

Next thing with 2011 is the stronger influence of video. Without a shadow of doubt, multimedia will win the Internet user hearts. Sites like Youtube have also gone under tremendous changes and with the extreme amounts of storage and bandwidth being used by Youtube, they’ve taken an active role to prune inactive or garbage videos as well as strong restrictions on bandwidth. 2012 may hold a new leader in video if things continue in this line of reasoning.

With the tremendous increase of multimedia on the Internet, I’m beginning to see the stress of extreme bandwidth on many Internet backbones. This is evident when searching sites across the country from after school to just after dinner, within North America. This same thing occurred about five years ago just before many of the major Internet backbones were improved upon then.

Finally, going forward, the Internet will become the place where businesses will make it in 2012 and going forward. There’s no longer any doubt that conventional advertising methods like print, radio and TV are becoming dinosaurs. If you doubt this, tell me where your Yellow Pages is and when you last used it? Or do you own a PVR to pre-record your favorite TV shows to gladly fast forward through those annoying commercials?

2012 will definitely hold the lion’s share of riches for businesses. I’m afraid to say that businesses that don’t start developing a stronger online web and social presence may just find themselves left out in the cold.

More recent statistics show that although young adults comprise about 35 percent of the total user base, the group covering 26 to 44-year-olds has caught up – now at about 36 percent – and is growing.

When people first started hear about Twitter, it was ridiculed as the place where people posted what they were eating. Well, it’s time for a rethink about Twitter, too. According to Google Plus Social Network User Statistics, there were 250 million Twitter users. The Twitter.com blog site reports that Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 accounts daily, based on averages.

So what do all these statistics and social media sites mean to marketing?

It has become obvious that by building social networks through social media websites, businesses could expand their reach, and acceptance and adaptation of these mediums became a requirement to compete for visibility and marketshare. And – Voila! Social Media Marketing was born!

But wait just a minute…

Has marketing really changed, or has the medium evolved?

To be successful in marketing, one always had to create relationships. People have always bought from people they know, like and trust. These fundamentals have always existed, and will continue to exist. Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, and Joe Girard – icons of a bygone era – all understood these principles.

Dale Carnegie was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. He wrote “How To Win Friends And Influence People” in 1936 which continues to be a popular book to teach business communication skills.

Zig Ziglar worked as a salesman in a succession of companies, and in 1968 he became a vice president and training director for the Automotive Performance Company. In 1970, he went into the business of motivational speaking full-time and was hired by many huge organizations including Fortune 500 companies.

Joe Girard is “The World’s Greatest Salesman”, as attested by the Guinness Book of World Records. For 12 straight years Joe sold more new retail cars and trucks than any other salesperson; in fact, he sold more cars and trucks as an individual than most dealerships sold in
total!

So what made these men so successful? They built relationships by listening to what their clients and prospects were saying! Too many times, we are so busy telling everyone what we have, and why it is the best, and why they should buy from us that we don’t hear what it is that they really want and need.

Active listening and trust building are key components to finding – and retaining – loyal clients. These elements are the core building blocks to a winning marketing strategy. And these skills are timeless.

So back to Social Media Marketing. Is it really all that different? Well, let’s see. You are still meeting clients and prospects; you are still interacting with them; you are still responding to their concerns; you are still providing products and services that they need. The only changes are the method of communication and how your reach has expanded.

We are all familiar with the concept of remixing music. Technology continually evolves, enabling tracks of prerecorded music to be augmented through weaving other music through it, or adding undertones and beats.

Well, now technology has evolved to add another dimension to marketing, and properly applied, this will create even better customer service for the clients and even more potential growth for businesses. Contact one of our representatives today to discuss how we can help you.

This is unfortunate as this has become a necessity for businesses as conventional advertising mediums, such as the Yellow Pages and newspaper advertising have lost almost all of their effectiveness.

The important point to remember is that just because there are snake oil peddlers out there, it doesn’t mean that the service is not necessary. Quite the contrary. You have to keep syndicating your site on a regular basis to ensure that you secure your spot in the search engines.

If you decide that you need online syndication services, let me offer you a few pointers that could help you avoid bad businesses.

Show Me The Backlinks!

Syndication online is all about back links to your site. Ranking is basically a worldwide voting contest. Whoever gets the most votes for a keyword wins! To prove this to yourself, search in Google for the keyword phrase ‘click here’.

You’ll find that the number one entry for that term is this web link here: http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Now, if you get all geeky and look at the code that makes up the page, you’ll find that this term does not appear once on the page! Now why would this web site, the Adobe Reader download page get so good a ranking for a term that they don’t even have on their site?

For a number of years, people have been providing pdf files on their sites and they will normally also include a courtesy link to the Adobe Reader download page to allow a web surfer to download the pdf reader so that they could read the pdf.

When they create the link, they will normally say something like, if you want to download the Adobe Reader software, click here.

Hence, Google and the other search engines count up all of the votes and come to the conclusion that this page is a valid site to be ranked #1 for the keyword phrase, click here.

If you wish to use the services of a search engine optimization vendor make sure that they can show you the links that they are creating to syndicate your site. There are many different types of back links and you need to ensure that what they are giving you are high-value backlinks.

If they are giving you low value links, it will end up hurting your web site in the long run. Since the latest Google Panda algorithm update in the spring, many sites that used spammy links to get their sites ranked have completely fallen out of the rankings.

Show Me The Costs

Next, ask for a full disclosure on fees. Many off shore search engine optimization companies will come in very low in price to get your business. Then they will start to ramp up pricing. I’ve heard of situations where a client will be paying $19 per month and soon will be asked to pay $2,000 per month because of one problem or another.

Show Me The Guarantee

When it comes to search engine optimization, there really are no guarantees. But get them to show you positive rankings for keywords that will lead to new client business. You should see improvement each and every month that you work with your search engine optimization experts. This is critical. If they are doing their job right, you’ll see steady improvement, month after month.

So stop listening to the buzz of snake oil salesmen and get on board with a company who is not just a search engine optimization company but an online marketing company. Give us a call and talk to one of our representatives.