The Niche Marketing Blog

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[Editor's note: Today's guest article focuses on social media trends that have recently emerged and that can be leveraged by smart niche marketers to create more traffic and more sales. Take a look at these trends and consider incorporating one or more of them into your current marketing mix. Let me know what you think by posting a comment below.  ~Scott]

Does the concept of starting a social media marketing campaign scare you? Don’t let it. While social media sites are quickly growing, they’re also becoming easier to use and are welcoming not only social butterflies but businesses as well. Social media marketing is slowly but surely finding its way into the standard marketing campaign – and for good reason. Here are some of the trends we’ve noticed over the past year.

A Lack of Control

When venturing into the world of social media, it is important to remember that you will have very little control over the actions and mindsets of your followers or fans. Take Facebook, for example. You may decide to build a business page for your organization but you may also find that your fans have created fan pages of their own – unofficial pages where they have chosen to network and talk about your products or services. While that shouldn’t discourage you from building your own page, it should encourage you to check out what others are doing or saying in an effort to monitor and protect your brand.

Exploring Collective Sales

The past year has introduced the concept of collective sales, or collective buying, to the social media marketing platform as well. Sites like Groupon offer businesses a set amount of guaranteed sales. You, as a business, will offer a steep discount but an individual can only take advantage of it if a guaranteed number of people make the purchase. Those clients may not turn into regular customers, but the collective sale will give you the opportunity to gain hundreds of new customers literally overnight.

Location Based Marketing

Technology is an incredible thing and advances in the way people can connect to the internet and, in turn, their social networks has had a huge influence on social media marketing. Anyone with a smartphone or an iPad can access the internet and many love checking in on social applications like Loopt and Foursquare. Even Facebook and Twitter have added applications that allow people to report where they are. Many business with storefronts are now offering incentives, ranging from discounts to free products, to customers who post that they are in the shop.

Social Networks and Gaming

Many social networks, including Facebook, feature incredibly popular games. Despite your hesitance, it’s important to recognize that millions of people are playing the games offered by social networking groups each day. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to advertise within these games. At the very least, you may be able to include your product in virtual form so that those playing can buy your services. They may just decide to do so in real life, too.

Social Media Experts

While social media was at one time completely free, trends now point towards the incorporation of social media experts into the overall marketing plan. These experts have experience setting up Twitter profiles or Facebook pages, making customizations and changes that will give you the most professional and appealing face possible. It’s all about building your brand, and an expert can help you set things up right from the start.

Social media marketing is growing by leaps and bounds and many businesses, from Toyota to Nike, are marketing their social networking pages (especially their Facebook fan pages) even more heavily than their own websites. It’s a trend in itself and will continue to grow over the next few years. Don’t launch an online business (or an offline business with a web presence) without adding social media to your marketing campaign. It’s guaranteed to make a huge difference.

http://thefoxegroup.com

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Technorati Tags: Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Loopt, niche marketing, niche markets, social media, Social network, Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

By Alain Portmann

A single site that aggregates content from a variety of social network sites would be a blessing for consumers; who signed up for a variety of social-networking sites from MySpace and Facebook to LinkedIn and Flickr cannot keep track of them all. This development parallels the Instant Messaging space, which saw the launch of Trillian, a proprietary multi-protocol instant messaging application for Windows created by Cerulean Studios.

Google is funding a project dubbed “Socialstream” which could be the world’s first unified social network, aggregating all existing social networks into a single interface. The reality is that Google’s social network offering has not taken off. Google’s lone current social network offering, Orkut, is not ranked in the top ten by Hitwise for U.S. social-networking sites. But Google is not alone in the race to deploy the first aggregated social network. Blue Swarm a startup in private beta, and Wink have some features to aggregate social networks. Also, Mozilla is developing a social-networking browser that compiles different social networks.

The advent of an open source social network would undoubtedly impact the entire social media segment, forcing social networks to begin addressing churn and reactivation of dormant users. A unified social network would cash into the chronically unfaithful of social media. Nielsen figures confirm that network promiscuity is a factor, showing that 444,000 Britons visited all three of the leading rivals MySpace, Facebook and Bebo this year. The dangers of network promiscuity are illustrated by the fate of Friendster. The social network accrued more than 20 million users after its launch in 2003. In 2006 that figure had fallen to less than one million as users migrated to sites with better tools.

An aggregated social network would also allow for the application of collaborative filtering to social media. By aggregating from a larger set of information the method of predicting (filtering) the interests of a user by collecting taste information from many users (collaborating) would be facilitated.

The trivialization of publishing brought on by social media is creating thousands of “publishing bubbles” which when aggregated can become incredibly powerful. John Blossom from Shore provides further perspective.

“Social media is challenging search engines as a starting point for finding answers to questions in part because people come to trust the insights and expertise of specific communities to provide both their own insights and insights from their own research. Answer-oriented communities such as Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers and LinkedIn Answers provide audiences the ability to vote on answers to specific questions – a competitive aspect to publishing that helps to both aggregate potential high-quality content and to rank its value.”

Alain Portmann, Web Liquid

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alain_Portmann
http://EzineArticles.com/?Social-Media-Aggregation—The-Next-Big-Thing&id=2206797

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Image via CrunchBase

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.

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Image via Wikipedia

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.

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Technorati Tags: Digg, Facebook, Reddit, social media, Social network, StumbleUpon, Twitter