Social Media Marketing Q&A

A form of online marketing that leverages user-generated content tools.

• Building relationships with influential bloggers. Their blogs are where your customers seek insight on your brand, your competitors and industry trends.
• Finding and responding to mentions of your brand (and competing ones) on

  social networking

  sites such as

  Facebook

  .
• Responding to questions and issues in discussion forums such as Google Groups and Yahoo Groups.
• Responding on dedicated

  social messaging

  tools like Twitter where your customers broadcast their thoughts.
• Engaging or creating 

  custom social networks

    that focus on narrower interests, but have a more dedicated following. Examples abound, including such sites as racingjunk.com for auto racing parts and scrapbook.com, for scrapbooking.
• Creating visual, audio and interactive tools such as video, photographs and podcasts.

It's where your customers are.

According to eMarketer, there were 69 million adults using online social networks in 2008, with 85 million projected by 2011. This is something to pay heed to, considering that consumers trust each other far more than they trust advertising.

Your competition is getting in the game.

81% of all PR firms expect to spend at least as much on social media channels as on traditional marketing within the next five years. Print media is on the way out, and even conservative companies are switching from traditional marketing to online. For instance, General Motors is pouring half of their $3 billion advertising budget into online marketing.

It costs surprisingly little compared to traditional campaigns.

For instance, we offer packages to get you started that cost a few thousand dollars, rather than the tens of thousands a large agency would require. (We also offer an hourly consulting rate if you have the resources to do it yourself but require some help getting started.)

We offer lower rates because we can work with you virtually, and we have the right mix of skills between ourselves and our partners to get things done quickly with very little rework. This greatly reduces our costs, and hence our fees.

Lower cost means lower risk.

If you want to get into social media but don't think you can justify the ROI, a low-cost entry makes for an easier sell to your partners or organization.

You'll work directly with experienced people.

We're small enough that you will deal with one of the company founders or someone else with a lot of experience behind them. You will not have an intern or someone fresh out of college managing your account.

We're connected.

This means that we can scale up if your project needs it, or stay small if it doesn't. It also means that we are in touch with the people who are influential with your customers online.