It's very trendy. Companies of varying size and type are exposing their brand and messaging via social media marketing. These organizations are having cocktail parties online! They are establishing and maintaining real-time conversations with customers, colleagues, industry peers, thought leaders and management. Throughout the conversations, brand loyalty is being garnered. Messaging is being spread. Stories are being told. The exposure is immediate, smart, savvy and contagious. "Social media creates a solar system for a brand with multiple satellites of interaction channels, some large, some small." - Derek Showerman, Director of Social Media, Authority Domains.

Use your website to first explain your message/brand and then have direct links to your social media sites (i.e. Facebook, twitter, online community, etc). But be sure to keep the design of your messaging, and overall identity consistent!

Expose your brand to social media and reap these benefits:

Online conversations and increased SEO
Thought provoking and news worthy content is contagious. People tell people. Conversations will build a community of loyal followers (customers).

Immediacy
Hitting a front page of major social video, news and bookmark sites will send you large amounts of instant traffic while simultaneously building your keyword optimization.

SEO
Conversations and linking will dramatically boost your rankings in search engines.

Peer Power
Gain peer recommendations, attract influencers, comments from bloggers, etc. Initiators and influencers decidedly play an important role in decision making.

All Natural
Receive natural links without any discernible pattern! Your website will be exposed to large groups of people in a spontaneous fashion. This differs from paid advertising which can be conceived as commercial efforts.

Quite Complimentary
Social media optimization and marketing is usually community-specific. It doesn't interfere with any other methods of getting traffic to your website. It can and will fit perfectly with an advertising campaign targeting other websites or search engines.

The bottom line is social media has created a way for people and businesses to become transparent. Social media can be a great way to find and establish followers, but like in real life, friendships require time, understanding, honesty, and the occasional greeting card. Before exposing your brand via social media, step back and take a look at all of your marketing components (logo, website, calls-to-action, etc). Make sure that all of your messaging is consistent and accurate before you expose your identity. Ask for help.

In the spirit of being social, join us for a live presentation about social media communities. A complimentary and informative networking event with appetizers, drinks and even pool. June 30, 2009, FELT Boston, 6-8:30PM. Sign up here.

Labels: bad branding, facebook, SEM, social media, social networking, twitter, Web Strategy in Search Dominated Environments

Google is THE advertising channel in the near and forseeable future. If your marketing plan doesn't include Google optimization at this point, then you're probably still hoping Betamax wins, you still buy cassettes for your Walkman, and your roller skates have four wheels — not in a row.

I recently attended the Web & Interactive Design Summit 2009 at the Harvard Medical Conference Center. Honestly, I was on the fence about going because they were mainly talking about how to use the new CS4 suite to design web sites, and I have a pretty good handle on that (although seeing the new CS4 features was kinda cool). But what impressed me most was Sandra Niehaus from Closed Loop Marketing's presentations on Web Strategy in Search Dominated Environments.

Sandra's first slide titled, "Opt out of the recession" says it all. The media landscape is no longer like the fertile fields of 1960's TV where you had a huge captive demographic on one of 3 major networks. It is now so fragmented across TV, radio, outdoor, and social marketplaces (to name a few) that you can't guarantee viewership of your marketing message. Technology has allowed your message to be muted, skipped, or just distracted from. But one channel that is growing is online usage, and if you want to be found online, then you better be speaking Google's language.

Basically, you need your code to be Google-friendly, you need your content to be Google-friendly, and you need other web sites to link to your site. Of course, getting found is just the first step. I'll speak about converting leads into customers in my next post!

Labels: Google Search, Sandra Niehaus, search engine marketing, SEO, Web and Interactive Design Summit, Web Strategy in Search Dominated Environments