20 Years. That’s how long it has taken for our entire definition of what the global market is to change completely. 20 years ago, the world was greeted with something that had only existed in science fiction; a means of communicating with anyone in the world through a rich, graphical interface. The internet, while existing since the 1960’s, really came into home use around 1992. Even with this amazing tool at our fingertips, it still took many years for businesses to realize what a powerful medium it was for reaching a huge percentage of the public. And social internet marketing was born.
In today’s marketplace, if you want to buy something from a store, you research it online, or order it from Amazon. If you want entertainment, you order from Netflix or Crackle. Interested in dating? There are hundreds of dating sites for nearly every age and personality type. The Internet provides us with the means to get anything we want, from groceries to shoes to life partners. The technology behind it is fast, easy to use, and at the fingertips of the majority of the spending audience of America.
Smart phones rocketed from science fiction to science fact.
With the advent of smart phones, the idea of Internet marketing has skyrocketed. Now, you can reach your audience anywhere at any time. Every application out there has the ability to insert an advertisement, or to text the end user, or to suggest new tools for the user to purchase. The fact that this is all coming through a phone is incredible enough, but now it’s more than that; it’s a conference room, a file storage device, a camera, a multimedia hub and presentation tool that many in the business world can’t seem to live without.
While all of this is amazing, the real crux for small businesses is how to take advantage of these amazing tools. For many, the prospect of using the Internet for generating additional business, while attractive, is still foreign territory. We are only one generation of users into the Internet, and the majority of small business owners are coming from an era where Internet marketing was largely unknown. A shop owner may know about the Internet and use it for purchases, but what about marketing through apps, or using an iPhone or iPad to serve as a register with a built-in merchants account? What about leveraging spreadsheet and presentational tools on the go to make sure your inventory is up to date? These aren’t the tools of science fiction anymore; they are real, affordable and manageable, regardless of prior experience.
What is Social Internet Marketing?
Social Internet Marketing is the process of using the Internet to reach your target audience through tools like blogs, social media sites and applications. We are exposed to the effects of social marketing every day, but often times we just don’t realize it. When asked, many marketing firms will tell you that while it is important to reach your audience through as many channels as possible, you have to be extremely careful about how you send your message online.
The best marketing, as any business will tell you, is word of mouth. Take Starbucks, who for over 20 years never aired any advertisements short of product placements in media. Their empire grew strictly on word of mouth, and as a result they are now considered the premier coffee chain on the planet. Word of mouth is vital for any business owner; we trust the opinions of one friend over 100 advertisements that tell us otherwise.
When we read something on a blog, we tend to give it a fair amount of credit. A blog is a webpage that serves as an electronic message board for an individual or a business. Blogs give an audience the ability to comment on and like what the poster has written, which gives the poster direction on where the blog should go in terms of content. Blogs can incorporate art, music and movies, and are used by many to share their opinions about popular culture.
If they blog about it, they will go see the movie.
When Marvel Entertainment decided to start advertising their Iron Man movies, they first reached out to bloggers and fans to show them what had been filmed. Marvel knew that if they wanted to get people excited, they needed to get the people who wrote about their products daily to get excited. The end result was that their primary audience of 16-25 year olds were talking constantly about the film a good six months before it premiered.
Companies will share their details through blogs all the time. Designers, artists and manufacturers now have their own blogs to talk about upcoming products or tours so that their core audience will stay educated. This also provides the companies with direct feedback from their most vocal fan base, which helps them to see what messages work and which ones don’t.
Admittedly, not everyone online reads all of an Internet marketing blog. Some people prefer using social networking sites. Social networking sites are websites designed to let many people post news and opinions about whatever they like and to share those opinions with the other users on the site. The two most popular social networks, Facebook and Twitter, allow instant access for end users through computers and smart phones.
Definition of a Push: it's a mini announcement.
Social network sites also allow pushes to let other users know what someone has done. A push is a mini announcement to all of the other users that are currently reading or following a single user’s online profile that tells the other users what that one person is up to. Maybe they just unlocked an accomplishment on a video game; the game may use these social networking sites to push out a message letting everyone else know, while simultaneously giving the game some extra advertising and inviting other people to join the end user. Location tags, brief messages that can be sent via GPS features on phones, let end users know where someone is shopping or hanging out. Likes, or follows of a company’s website, give that company the instant ability to update end users on anything they want, from new products to upcoming sales.
Social Internet marketing offers many different ways to reach an audience; and depending on your business goals, it can give you a wide array of tools to meet your needs, provided that you know what you want.
What ways are you using social internet marketing?
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.