SNM: Social Network Marketing Cashing in on the SEO Enigma

admin    Website Design     cashing, Enigma, Marketing, Network, Social

SNM: Social Network Marketing Cashing in on the SEO Enigma

SNM is the accidentally sarcastic acronym I’ve assigned to Social Network Marketing – a growing commodity offered in the same market as PPC and SEO, where the idea is to make more than you spend bringing paying customers from the Web.

The people who are in a hurry to locate information on a commodity by using a search engine are doing so in real time, most likely because they need something and they are qualified and ready to buy whatever it is they need. Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, and the others are straight lines to find the product. After a few queries the prospective buyer will have found what he was looking for and reach for the phone. Search Engine Optimization allows sites to show up among the visible search results on the relevant queries. A well-done site in a market sector that’s not too competitive will exist for years in the top positions until someone else does something about it. In this way, SEO produces a steady stream of relevant traffic where qualified buyers can examine your site and contact you.

By contrast, the glorified spam that adorns the inbox every morning from sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, and FaceBook are more of an annoyance than anything and anyone who’s got time to follow a dozen sites like Twitter all day is probably eccentric, unemployed or underage. Connecting with possible colleagues is time-consuming and doesn’t necessarily lead to any sort of business transaction, and traffic to the company web site won’t increase. Requests come in to befriend other people, thereby making more complex communication as the receiver tries to figure out if there’s any reason to pay attention. By the time a businessman reads his mail, RSS feeds, and blogs the lights are off and everyone’s gone home.

Social Media for use in business is a condensed version of the Public Relations firm of old; the concept is to increase brand awareness and company exposure. It takes a fair sized budget to gain recognition and it is difficult to measure the ROI. Surveys are expensive and measuring small bits of data also consumes resources. With Social media you have to set up analytics accounts, track every event that happens to each social platform, and set up virtual pages to create a vanity URL that redirects to a tracking URL using 301 redirects to log the user as they click through the social site to the linked web site – all just to get some idea of the conversion rate.

Site owners want to know if the Social Network Marketing will make money and they want to know if it will help their SEO efforts to attain higher Google rankings. In the business-to-business world the short answer is “no”. With some effort there are ways to make each happen but the ROI would be miniscule compared to other advertising efforts. Bloggers, scientists, or journalists can use SNM to their advantage for readership, discussion, recognition, and educational exchange. Campaigns targeting consumers may benefit in the long run to some extent, but the real barrier to profit is human nature. Social networks depend on willing interaction which is not in real time; as the attention span of the herds grows shorter each year people can’t be counted on to remember things or take action after the stimulus has passed. We’ve all bookmarked dozens of sites we’ll never visit again.

Niche sites are the best bet for marketers, for the visitors will share an interest that could be associated with products and services. The outreach of the business message could hit home with those in a position to buy. They may be interested in selling you something you may or may not need. The drawback is that you may be offering a bucket of baseballs to somebody who already owns a bucket of baseballs.

When it comes to SEO, most article directories have “Share” buttons leading to over 230 social networking sites, so the SEO articles kill two birds with one stone…those wishing to send the article off to their favorite blog site can do so with a click. The meat and potatoes of link-building is most effective when done through press releases, listings in relevant SEO directory categories, article source directories like GoArticles, Amazines, My Free Article Central, ArticlesRich, and many others. Good compact content will entice search engines to read and follow the links in a simple fashion, without the need for customizing numerous social media pages, creating graphics and copy, developing a marketing strategy, maintaining, updating, formatting, monitoring, and all those things that big companies can afford but are not realistic for those with limited budgets.

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SMEs cashing in on Twitter craze

admin    Twitter Marketing     cashing, craze, SMEs, Twitter

SMEs cashing in on Twitter craze

Today wherever one looks around, someone can be found twitting, be it for business or personal reasons. From political figures and movie celebrities across the globe to business tycoons and socialites to the common mass, the latest micro-blogging sensation, Twitter.com has been successful in drawing considerable amount of attention from sizeable section of the society.

At a time when everyone seems to be twitting their thoughts, view points and expressing ideas or even using this social networking site for commercial benefits, can small businesses stay far behind from joining the bandwagon?

Twitter helps generate business

Realising the power wielded by this micro-blogging platform, business corporations across the world, whether big or small, are signing up on Twitter to enhance their growth prospects and connect with customers and investors on a personal level.

“Having a presence on Twitter helps small businesses to build and enhance business relations, connect with the community of people who have similar commercial interests and monitor their brand,” said Kishore Tapre, media coordinator at Prana PR, a public relations firm in Mumbai.

Twitting on a regular basis enables small businesses to keep a track of their customer needs, offer them assistance, publicly display customer-service successes and receive immediate feedback.

“Twitter search advertising is a powerful tool that enables SMEs to publicise and promote their products and services with relevant search results. Providing updates, live news and talking of recent developments also help small businesses to generate traffic,” said Aditya Agarwal, proprietor of Hot Cash Enterprises, a small-sized garment manufacturer based in Kolkata who uses Twitter to promote his company’s product base.

Moreover, given the fact that Twitter is an easy-to-use social networking platform and comes free, small businesses are increasingly turning to it for enhancing their popularity.

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