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Part 7 of social media marketing: promote your company and yourself
May 12, 2008
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With the billions of websites and blogs online, driving people to your site can be a full-time job. But it doesn't have to be. As with off-line, you have to reach out and touch your customers, and potential customers, numerous times to get their attention. As I've stated before, you have to be careful with your online reputation and not just place your name and information everywhere. In part 6, I discussed how to join a discussion and build a relationship with a blogger or community that is discussing your target market. Now it's time to start promoting yourself:
1. Once you've contributed on the blogs, send an email privately to the blogger to ask if they'd review your site or discuss your products.
2. Decide ahead of time what's in it for the them: offer them a discount, free products, link back to their blog off your website, etc. You can also offer your best customers/bloggers something really special - like cool product merchandise or extra big discounts on a certain day each month.
3. Assume nothing. Bloggers may talk favorably about your company or products, or not. IF you're nervous about what they might blog (after all, some people think bad publicity is just as good a favorable), ask if they'd be willing to share any negative comments with you first so you can change them immediately. This is a good opportunity to find out what's wrong directly from your audience.
4. Be transparent. You're in a social environment and you wouldn't whip out your marketing presentation at a dinner party (I hope), so don't do it here. Hard sells are best left on the used car lots, not here.
5. Word-of-mouth (or viral marketing) and search engine optimization are two tools that work really well in the social network. Use both effectively to your advantage because the goal is to have people say to each other, "Hey guys, check this out."
Part 1: research & evaluation / benchmark what people are discussing | Part 2: ensure your website is visit-worthy | Part 3: create bookmarks & tagging for your content | Part 4: increase your linkability & reward your inbound links | Part 5: evaluate the online channel strategies | Part 6: work to build your community & participate yourself | Part 7: promote your company and yourself | Part 8: measuring your progress | Part 9: improve the benefit and the experience |
Part 10: help your content travel | Part 11: use the 22 psychological needs to make a difference |
Part 12: social networking tools
Posted by Suze Bragg on May 12, 2008 | Comments (0)
