What is Social Network Marketing?According to Wikipedia Social Networking is:
"A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.
Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people."
Now that you know what a social network is, how can you use it to benefit your business?
Why Social Network Marketing as opposed to traditional forms of marketing such as television, print ads, marketing pieces (pencils, t-shirts, etc), car/bus marketing, direct mail marketing, email, and other forms of marketing?
SIMPLE: The past ten years have turned every person who owns a television, email address, search engine, and snail mailbox into apathetic consumers. APATHETIC CONSUMERS don't care to look anymore, they need new stimulation, new ideas, new marketing directed entirely at them. Although email lists, and pay-per-click are still excellent ways to market there is an entire untapped marketing demographic out there with money to spend on your product, just waiting on social networking sites.
There are millions of ways to use a social network to benefit your business.
Social networks are comprised of billions of people all looking for the next trend and the best deal. It is the ULTIMATE 'keeping up with the Jones's' but on many deep levels. For every person, there is a product, and for every product, there are hoards of people waiting to be the first to get the newest, coolest, least expensive, and most radical thing or service.
Marketing:
Billions of people means billions of potential new customers.
Social networks offer a free way of "making friends" based around certain interests of a persons life. Free friends means free marketing, lots of free marketing.
Businesses and individuals can have "profiles" on Facebook, Myspace, BEBO, Blogger (here), Twitter, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, and thousands more.
Profiles detail information about you and your business and act like an online business card. They are your ultimate marketing portfolio. Portfolio and "friend finder" marketing are generally free but they have their limits.
Although FREE marketing sounds great it takes time, effort, and learning power to use a social network to your total business advantage. In addition many social networks have rules about posting business related information, so you have to be tricky about what you post, and to whom. Savvy companies are paying tech-savvy students upwards of $20-$40 per hour just to spend a few hours per day "socially marketing" their company. The return on investment is HUGE averaging around 1000% if you find your niche demographic.
THE EASY WAY around this is to work with marketing packages designed to specifically target social networkers at their site. These are broken down by individual interest and demographic and can run as low as $15 per package, and well into the $100,000 mark to create a new platform. There are several easy to use packages to the right that allow you to reach millions, if not billions of potential new customers.
As social marketing specialists we are always happy to point you in the right direction of the right low cost package with a high rate of return on your marketing investment. Feel free to look to the right for paid packages, or look through our blogs for freebies. We are always here to answer your questions as we know this information can be overwhelming.
Signing Off
Diane Boerstler
CEO
Boerstler Solutions
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