Businesses Use Social Media as Marketing Tools

Social Media is rapidly becoming a fast, efficient, and relatively low-cost way to get your message directly to an audience. Over 100 million-plus videos are downloaded from YouTube each day. There are millions of blogs and millions of profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. These new tools - blogs, wikis, podcasts, rss feeds, online video and social networks - all present intriguing opportunities for customer engagement, but can be intimidating.

Web tools, once thought to be the domain of teens and young adults, are becoming part of businesses’ marketing strategies. Many businesses are just beginning to experiment with the tools, but marketing gurus are preaching the need for businesses to get on the online networking bandwagon.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, survey conducted among adults in May 2008:

• 70% of adults in the United States use the Internet daily
• 29% say they have used a networking site
• 13% use an online social networking site daily
• 33% say they have read a blog
• 11% of adults read a blog on a daily basis

Reach customers at the places where they are already going

People spend hours on Facebook at night. Many people are more attentive to Facebook than to their own e-mail at this point. Reaching out to customers through Facebook allows businesses to catch their attention in a new way. Maintaining a group page on the site with news, specials and events is a sure and possibly more effective way to keep your customers up-to-date and engaged. Advertising on the site may also be worth considering as it allows businesses to target his ads to specific types of people who might be clients on the basis of demographics, locations, interests or preferences.

Select the right channel

If you’re a really niche B2B business, maybe you should create a network on Ning. Ning.com is a web site that allows anyone to create an open network to discuss an industry or topic, comparable to an ongoing version of an annual industry convention.

Keep on top of what customers are saying about you

Companies are now feeling the need to dispel rumors or problems right away. It’s an opportunity for both feedback and to address a complaint directly. Previously, unhappy customers complained to their neighbor about a business. Now they complain online, including complaining to Twitter users. Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows users to update friends with brief notes on their thoughts or activities.

Keeping up with messages and content

One of the challenges of Web 2.0 - Though it’s free to sign up for most of the applications, keeping up with them takes time. A blog with no posts is no different from a web site, and maybe worse. Marketing professionals and others who have found success with Web 2.0 applications say they demand daily attention.

Web 2.0 applications, done correctly, can actually save businesses time. If you are more effectively reaching your core customer, you are more effectively, in theory, selling your product.

Events - I came across this event (worth taking a look) : Social media marketing for businesses - Feb 25, 2009 - http://www.gravitysummit.com/2008/12/social-media-marketing-for-business-event-feb-25-2009/