There is much discussion these days about social media and whether or not it will be around in a few years.
Watch this short video and decide for yourself.
If you believe that social media is the wave of the future, then the next questions are:
* how can you leverage social media to better reach your market?
* how can you use social media to help you find your audience?
* how can social media help you discover niches and micro-niches?
We’ll explore these questions in future posts. In the mean time, what are your thoughts about the future of social media?
Click on the following link to learn more about the book, Socialnomics.
Today, people who frequent Twitter and LinkedIn expect to locate market leaders in their markets. Your customers expect to see top-level content on all of your profile pages when clicking on links within the social networking search engine tools. By providing them with valuable content you will attract more and more customers who eventually purchase your products and services.
As an Internet marketer you need to incorporate all of the social networking sites you have optimized profiles on, into your marketing channels. You can do this by first placing social media icons on your website and blog. What this will do is encourage readers and visitors to your site to click on the icons which will link them to your social pages.
Here is where relationship building comes into play, or relationship marketing as it is called in the business world. This will allow people to get to know you and pick your brain. Give your viewers, customers, and subscribers a reason to check out your pages by offering them some freebie such as an e-book, manual, or special report. By giving them free valuable content, when the need arises that they need a product or service within your niche market, you will be the first one that comes to mind.
You need to make sure that your LinkedIn profile page is optimized by including all of your relevant market keywords and phrases into your content. This will enable your profile to be ranked within your industry focused environment. Also, make sure that you have your blog URL listed on your LinkedIn page so it will be frequently updated. This will also have your name and link to your page listed on the update reports your contacts receive.
Twitter now has a very powerful and useful search tool which is present on every profile page you look at. This search tool is a very strategic device to incorporate into your information gathering strategies. By consistently using your keywords and phrases in your tweets your information will be more likely to be listed higher on twitter search results along with Google Social Search listings.
By incorporating the above techniques into your social networking strategies you’ll start to attract more customers by treating your social media sites and search engines as marketing magnets.
If you are out to attract prospective customers and develop your online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about social networking.
Dr. Dave Hale, The Internet Marketing Professor, is one of the country’s leading developers of Internet marketing and social media curriculum for businesses and universities and specializes in online marketing communications.
Social media sites are quickly becoming powerful tools for the niche marketer. Facebook has recently announced reaching 500 million users. YouTube is now streaming two billion videos a day. Twitter is expanding at a faster and faster clip.
These, and dozens of other social media sites, have turned the social media experience into a boon for the savvy niche marketer. How? Each of these social media sites have “search function” capability. This allows marketers to focus and follow conversations within their niches.
Keeping current on the latest trends, releases, and topics is powerful in itself. But, the real power lies n the niche marketer’s ability to interact, to comment, and to respond to the stream of information in which they are competing. This gives the astute niche marketer the edge by creating opportunities to be seen and heard by prospects.
If managed correctly, the niche marketer can be viewed as an authority, or expert, in their chose field, and this positioning can drive traffic back to a home page.
What does all of this mean for you? Quite simply, if you are not engaging in social media to help sell your products and services, you are leaving lots of money on the table.
Today’s tip: figure out who your target market is and use social media to connect with them.
Social Media Revolution: Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details out social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore. This video is produced by the author of Socialnomics.
NicheTrends.net If you’re stuck trying to find niche ideas for your niche marketing, here are some free tools that I use to find hot trends that may help you as well. You can also download a free report of the hottest niche marketing trends of 2008 a…
NicheTrends.net The key to niche market research is finding the needs of your target market. Watch over my shoulder as I dive into market research for a niche. Need more ideas? Download a free report on hot niche trends on http
What do Starbucks, Sports Authority, and Jack in the Box all have in common? They all are successful, national brands. They also have recently embraced social media as part of their marketing campaigns.
Starbucks and Sports Authority are developing campaigns using “location based” media (such as Foursquare.com), and Jack in the Box has developed a “fan page” on Facebook where they can communicate their latest promotions via their fan base.
Hundreds of businesses, both large and small, are following suit.
Whether you publish a blog, or have a “brick and mortar” retail location, you can no longer afford to ignore social media and it’s power to both create a community of followers, and nudge those followers to your blog or store.
But, with the dozens of social media sites popping up, where do you start? My recommendation is to visit several of the better known sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon) and see which ones “fit” your personal style.
For instance, if you are interested in bookmarking sites in your industry, consider the social bookmarking sites (like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller).
If writing short posts is more in tune with your lifestyle (called “micro-blogging”), then consider Twitter.
If you just want to jump in with both feet – and mix it up with 400 million of your closest “friends” – then Facebook might be the place for you.
In any case, get in the pool and start paddling around. You’ll find that the water is just fine.
Once you’ve settled on a small list of social media sites that interest you, set up an account with each and begin posting; post about yourself, but also post about your industry and your business.
One word of caution here: don’t get into social media sites thinking that you are going to get very far by selling your products and services – that will come later. Simply become part of the conversation and and listen for frustrations and “pain points’. Offer advice. Point people towards solutions that you have found. Be seen as an expert. Lead the conversation. If you have something useful to say, people will start looking forward to your posts, and then will want to learn more by stopping by your blog or store.
So, you’re now ready to take your first step. It is a good step to take. In future posts I’ll explore more of the social media sites, along with some tips and tricks for building a loyal following.
commoncraft.com A simple story that illustrates the forces shaping social media. This video comes in an unbranded “presentation quality” version that can be licensed for use in the workplace. http
chris.pirillo.com – Blake Cahill recently interviewed me, and I thought you might find my answers somewhat interesting. If you wanna know what I care about most, let me lay it on the line… and please post a video response with your own take on Soci…
Twitter is one of the “new kids on the block” in the Social Media or Web 2.0 world. It has some fantastic social aspects and if used correctly it can be a great tool. You can use Twitter for market research, which should be one of your core internet marketing strategies. The best thing about using Twitter is you get the research done quickly-and for free!
Broad audience
One of the best aspects of Twitter from a marketing perspective is the broad reach you have. You can touch millions of people around the world. At any given moment there are literally millions of people twittering away.
You put a tweet out to the Twitterverse…asking a question and you will get short, spontaneous answers…these tend to be direct and not calculated because they are spontaneous. The Tweeple don’t take time to think about their answers…tweets are flying by too quickly for that…so they just answer!
You can either put out the questions manually as in “What is your favorite flavor ice cream?” or you could use one of the applications and create a poll or survey giving them specific choices.
After you get your initial results, you can even tweet the outcome giving people a chance to respond and further refine or clarify your research!
Eaves dropping
You can also conduct market research by listening in on other people’s tweets. You can find out for free what people are buzzing about, what they are looking for, problems they are encountering, solutions they wish they could find…or just info they are seeking.
Twitter has a search function built in so you can find people talking about a specific subject. You can also use different search applications to find comments. The hashtag is a popular way for people to identify a topic they are interested in.
So if I want to find out what people are talking about regarding ice cream, I could type “ice cream” in the search box, or “#icecream”. The # will return tweets by people who have put that exact phrase #icecream in their tweet.
So I could ask my question so I catch both groups-”what is your favorite ice cream flavor? #icecream” And I still have 91 characters left!
By getting this input, you can then direct your next project to solve a problem that you know exists! This is one of the classic offline and internet marketing strategies: find a need and fill it! This research might lead you to promote a different product than you had originally intended. Or maybe it gives you clues on how to write the sales copy to make your product more appealing. It might inspire you to create a new product or improve an existing product-or to provide a service that fills a need.
Learn fast act fast
Another one of my internet marketing strategies is acting while a market is hot and Twitter really helps here! Because you got the research quickly, you can also act upon it quickly.
So by using social media, specifically Twitter, you are able to implement at least three of your internet marketing strategies-market research, filling a need and acting quickly.
Tellman Knudson is CEO of Overcome Everything. He and his team at The Listbuilding Club are passionate about teaching others the ins and outs of list building and other internet marketing strategies. To learn more about using Social Media in your internet marketing business, visit http://ListSpeed.com/
When you think of search engines, what names come to mind? if you are like most people, you’ll probably come up with some combination of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you’ve been on the Net for a while, you might also think of Alta Vista, Baidu, Ask, and dozens of others.
Most netizens associate Facebook with social networking, and Twitter with micro-blogging. But few realize that both Facebook and Twitter are also up and coming search engines, as both offer searchable keyword databases.
With active Facebook members now exceeding 400 million, and active Twitter members now exceeding 100 million, the respective search databases are enormous.
Add to this Facebook’s pay-per-click ad network (with rumors that Twitter will be following suit with their own paid advertising), and you have a potent combination for both demographic/geographic keyword research and targeted advertising opportunities.
If you are an on-line marketer who is looking to build traffic and reach your target audience, then don’t overlook Facebook and Twitter when it comes to search.
The other day I was having lunch with one of my clients when he mentioned that he had just received an email from a large “Internet marketing company” that was pitching “local search”. The email claimed that my client would be able to secure Page 1 rankings, for any keyword, in the major search engines, by simply adding the name of the local community to the keyword phrase.
My client asked me what I thought about this. I told him that I thought it was a waste of his money. Let me explain.
I have worked with many clients to set-up and optimize their local search programs. Local search is a valuable service, but only if you have a physical, brick-and-mortar, type of business. This particular client has an on-line presence only; there is no physical location. As such, they are looking for customers without reference to any particular locale.
Since their customers can arrive from any point on the Internet, and since they will never stop by any storefront, it doesn’t matter if the “store” is located in California or Kalamazoo.
For that reason, and for this particular client, local search won’t really buy them any more traffic because the frame of reference of the customer is on the product, not the location.
So, if you are considering setting up a local search program (or having someone do it for you), take a moment to decide whether or not local search will bring you any benefits. If you sell exclusively on-line, you can skip local search (and mobile marketing as well, but that’s another topic). If you have a physical location, and can benefit from walk-in traffic, then local search isn’t only desirable for your business, it is becoming mandatory.
This year, 34 local search marketers, small business owners, web developers, etc., have contributed thoughts and opinions on what matters most when it comes to ranking in the Google 7-pack, Yahoo’s local business listings, …
Local Search – This Isn’t Your Daddy’s Internet. By Richard Geasey. Related Articles. How Local Search Marketing works | Local SEO Tutorial · Does the Internet show the true colors of your business? Share/Bookmark …
In 1971, British rock group, The Who, released their seminal album, Who’s Next, which featured a song titled Going Mobile. This was a song about a guy who decided to give up his rooted existence and go on the road.
39 years later, it looks like he’s got lots of company.
Recent research indicates that, on a daily basis, more people are accessing the Internet via their smart phones, than there are people emailing. That’s an astounding figure considering that smart phones weren’t even around a decade ago.
So, “mobile” has arrived and while not all pieces of the mobile landscape have been figured out, the smart business owners are already looking to mobile marketing strategies in an effort to get ahead of the curve.
What can you do to begin the process for your own business? Start by making sure that your web site is formatted for mobile devices. If you are running a WordPress blog, it is a fairly simple process of installing one of several available plug-ins. I use WPTouch, but you can choose whichever one suits your tastes.
If you are running a web site, you will have to get into a little more programming. Contact your web site administrator and talk with him/her about adding some code that will allow the site to be formatted for mobile devices. Be aware that you will mostly likely have to set up an additional hosting service for the mobile site (I will cover this in another post).
Whatever you do (or do not do), understand that “mobile” is not only here to stay, but will most likely be the dominate platform of the near future.
Mobile is now finally beginning to deliver on its promise to advertisers. The mobile marketing industry has long predicted the arrival of broadband mobile internet and rich multimedia phones in mass, and we are now seeing consumers understanding, int…
thunder::tech’s first episode of Good Morning Marketers, our new monthly morning show dedicated to the latest marketing trends. This month’s topic is mobile marketing and how smart phones are changing the communication landscape. For more information…
One of the main reasons the mobile platform is gaining momentum as a marketing tool is because of its enormous growth potential. The number of mobile phone users is almost double that of PC owners — and growing exponentially every year. Mobile market…
1. Not knowing what you don’t know
Its easy to do online surveys these days. Too easy. It may be so cheap and easy that you do it without understanding the basics and end up with misleading answers that send your business down the wrong path. This is worse than never doing any research in the first place. Spend a little time and get to know what you don’t know about market research. A basic review of the following topics is a great start.
Some great books on these subjects are:
“Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method” by Don A. Dillman
“Asking Questions: A Definitive Guide to Questionnaire Design” by Norman Bradburn, Seymour Sudman, Brian Wansink
2. Not eliminating sampling errors
Now that you know what sampling error is you can understand why it is critical to conducting meaningful market research. Many of the online surveys you see today are full of potential sampling errors. Don’t be one of them. Take the time to develop a good sample and then make sure you get as many of those people as possible to your survey. This is probably the biggest difference between professional market research and your do-it-yourselfers. The pros take the time and money to develop good samples and then make sure that they get good response rates. You can to if you put in the effort.
Always use a true random sample
Tracking your respondents (PINs)
Program the survey to eliminate duplicates and respondents with bad intentions
Check the data for oddities (clean the data of illegitimate records)
Use incentives (does not have to be monetary, see social contract)
3. Making decisions with inaccurate information
If you never understood any of # 1 and # 2 it is a good bet your survey is useless. Worse than that you may think it is telling you what to do with your important business decisions. Making decisions with inaccurate information is worse than taking a guess.
4. Writing bad questionnaires
You might get everything else right and then go and write a bad questionnaire. Lots of online surveys have at least one bad question. What is a bad question? It’s any of the following:
Biased questions
Unanswerable questions (impossible to know the answer)
Questions with two meanings
Hard to understand questions (way to long, strange use of words)
Dumb questions (asking about something the researcher should already know, or has already asked)
5. Programming a hard to take survey
After you have spent all that time creating a good sample and writing good questions don’t ruin it by programming a hard to use survey. One of my top gripes is forcing respondents to complete every answer. Too much of this is going to get you either a contrived answer or the respondent leaving. Neither is good.
Don’t force non-critical questions
Don’t have non-standard buttons
Don’t use non-standard technologies (java applets, etc.)
6. Going cheap
Both the good and bad thing about online market research is that it can be much less expensive than in the past. The bad of this is that it is just too easy to conduct flawed market research. Many of the above items cost time and money (sampling, questionnaire design, etc.) Spend the time and money to do it right. Even better hire a quality market research firm to do it for you. Either way you will save money in the long run by conducting quality market research.
7. Confusing social networking with quantitative market research
Talking with lots of people (social networking) might gain you valuable qualitative information but it is not quantitative market research. The difference is qualitative information rarely represents all of your audience and gives you individual opinions and ideas. Quantitative research on the other hand is designed to represent all of your audience and gives you answers that you can know reflects all of your customers. Don’t confuse the two. Social networking can be useful but understand its limitations.
8. Being overly “cute” with the survey tool
Your market research is supposed to gather meaningful information about your target audience. It is not supposed to impress them with all the high technology you can master. Keep your survey technology as simple as possible to reduce excluding respondents that are not up to speed with the latest and greatest.
Keep Flash and JavaScript to a minimum (use them but not in critical areas, always provide alternatives.)
Use tried and true web technologies
9. Relying on only one source of information
Market research is a snapshot of opinions at a certain time. If your research results in wildly different answers than you were anticipating it is wise to confirm these conclusions with more data.
Conduct another survey
Look for corroborating data
10. Ignoring your market research
If you go to all the trouble to conduct a good study then have a plan to do something with that information. Too many organizations will conduct market research for one reason or another and when they get information back just sit on it. Don’t be the one who ends up saying “Wow, if we had just done what our market research told us we wouldn’t be in this bad position”. Before you conduct any online research have a plan as to what you will do with it.
Zachary Wilson is Vice President and Web Manager of Wilson Research Group (a small Silicon Valley market research firm) and has been conducting online surveys for over 10 years. This article targets those who are not market research professionals but want to conduct professional surveys.
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