There is a lot of buzz building about the power of social network marketing (and Web 2.0) to grow a business. And not just growth for the big dog corporate giants, but growth for little store-front businesses, network marketing businesses, spare-bedroom businesses, garage businesses…and most importantly, your business.
The numbers make sense. Everyone can see that the ‘Net is a giant, noisy marketplace. Surely everyone can get a slice of that pie.
As financial times get tougher (and when you own a business, things are usually tough to start) Mom and Pops are cranking up their marketing plan by trying to access the Promised Land: The Internet. Eager to try, small business owners hire a website designer and get hosting. They create a flashy website, they smile, and they brace themselves for the onslaught of eager customers who will empty their store shelves of product.
Then…crickets.
This week, I asked a couple of business owners about how they advertise using the Internet. The charming lady who owns the candy shop on the corner took her business to the ‘Net, but now she’s convinced it’s a dead end. She launched an attractive website that her nephew built for her over a year ago. It has pretty graphics. It describes her store’s product and her passion about candy-making. Her site provides a link to a map service so people can chart a route to her store. She now says, “That’s just a bunch of noise. I didn’t get one customer from that website. The Internet doesn’t work.”
The nice fellow who owns the electronic fix-it shop up the street is running his business pretty close to the bone lately. He says it’s impossible to compete with the giant box stores and he’s paying his bills by selling stuff on Craigslist. I asked him if he ever considered social network marketing to find customers and he said, “What, like chat rooms and stuff? How’s that going to bring me any business? I don’t have time to chat with people a million miles away. They are never going to buy anything here.”Then I gave him $13 for the item he’s selling on Craigslist. He didn’t seem happy to make the sale and no wonder. He’s a talented guy and he’s schlepping garage sale goods to pay the light bill.Here’s what these smart, hard-working business owners are missing: A website is not Internet marketing. It’s just a website. Without traffic, a website is like a flashy billboard on a road through a ghost town. Worse, it’s a flashy billboard advertising a physical location that’s too far away for the tumbleweeds blowing through town to even bother READING.
So what is social network marketing and how does it solve this problem for my example business owners? Well, social network marketing will only solve half of the problem for my friends. The first thing they need to do is to rethink the purpose of their website.Using a website to help people get to their physical location is NUTS. Any Marketing 101 class tells us that business owners need to find a niche market and offer a product to that niche that solves a problem or need. For example, I recommend that my chocolate shop owner sell her sugar-free chocolates to a special needs diabetic niche. I’m advising my electronics guy to offer video transfers to baby boomers who want to compile family histories.
And although the message of a website should never be just sales, if you aren’t selling something you aren’t making money. Without product, your website becomes just an expensive yellow page listing.
Once you’ve got an actual market in mind to sell your product to, then you need to let the world know you’re there. And that’s the magic of social network marketing. Social network marketing is as powerful as they say it is for gathering targeted traffic, and better yet it’s mostly free. And, if you’ve done it right, the traffic you locate will be prime, niche-specific, interested-in-your-product traffic.
In other words, social network marketing creates GOLDEN traffic.Social network marketing is a method of marketing through this huge jungle of sites on the ‘Net called social media sites. Social media sites are growing every day in both site offerings and site users. These sites exist for the purpose of providing a space where people can chat, share opinions, and provide information (in written, audio, and video formats).Social media sites are sort of like the porch of the dry goods store 100 years ago, or a barbershop 50 years ago.
As society becomes more technologically saturated, people are desperately seeking that human element and that’s where the demand for these sites originates. You’ve heard of some of these sites, of course: YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Squidoo, Digg, eHow, Skype…the list goes on and on.Social media sites are very user friendly.
That’s what “Web 2.0″ means, actually. These sites are the next evolution of public websites. Designed to facilitate interaction between regular people, it’s not just for computer whizzes who understood the Internet ten years ago. And you can use these sites to be friendly AND to provide information and opinions related to your business products.
People searching for information and opinions find your social network marketing posts on the social media sites. Some even find your posts using the search engines. (Search engines love social media site content).
People will like your information – everyone is starving for god information! – and they will begin to follow your posts, or “friend” you to learn more, or subscribe to your video channel so they see whatever you do next. Some information seekers follow a link to your webpage and…voila! The really, really good traffic just found YOU.
Sounds great, right? But how do you hack through the “jungle” I warned you about?
Well, get a machete, obviously: it’s going to take some time, energy, and the acquisition of new skill sets. You can’t just buy a pay per click ad and hope for the best anymore…that’s yesterday’s marketing plan. This is an investment in your business’s survival.Fortunately, there are books available to help you.
There are training systems on the Internet that teach you click-by-click how to use social network marketing to attract customers. You’ve got to cut through the jungle and find your business thriving on the other side.
Author: Christine Sheridan Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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