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Local Online Marketing
Building Brand Visibility, Sales and Leads with Local Search and Social Media Marketing III
This email newsletter is the third in our series on local online marketing. In the first two issues we covered local search marketing, the next two issues are dedicated to local social media marketing where we focus primarily on Twitter, Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook. We start with Twitter.
Social Media is still a relatively new development in which Internet users use online technologies, platforms, tools and practices to share experiences, opinions, insights, perspectives and media itself. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Any type of media, user or professionally generated, can be social media. Social media-enabled web sites use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts and wikis to allow users to interact. A few prominent examples of social media platforms are Twitter (microblogging), Facebook (social networking), Craigslist (social classified and community), LinkedIn (business networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), YouTube (video sharing), Digg (news sharing) and Flickr (photo sharing). Social media marketing is the practice of using these platforms and media to promote products and services online.
Although adoption of social media continues at a rapid pace small businesses have been slow in adopting social media marketing practices for generating brand visibility, driving user engagement and traffic. The main reason for this is that most small businesses lack time, are on tight budgets, often lack technical expertise and therefore often need support and handholding with difficult or new concepts. Local social media marketing, however, offers a great opportunity for small businesses to generate leads and sales at a relatively low cost.
Social Media Optimization
One important thing to consider is that currently most small business web site visits are initiated through search and direct navigation. So it is important, in order to engage visitors with social media, to have recognizable and visible links on the web site that point to social network sites, so that customers or potential clients know that they can interact with the business through social networks.
Twitter
Twitter is a rapidly growing free micro-blogging platform that offers its users a way of sending short, 140 character text messages, known as "tweets", to their user profile where they are displayed for viewing and across the Twitter network to a community of users (known as followers) who have subscribed to the senders' tweets. Topics typically vary from updates about daily activities to news stories to social commentary about an issue.
One of the great benefits of using Twitter as a marketing tool is that it is 100 percent opt-in. This means that people who want to receive messages (Tweets) from a business need to sign up as Followers. For example, if someone decides to follow a certain store then this is primarily because they are interested in the specials (new product, promotions, announcements) that are promoted in the Tweets. As a result tweets are clearly targeted to an audience that is eager to receive the information.
More than any other social media tool Twitter is all about conversations and therefore ideal for finding people in a local community to connect with. Twitter's advanced search function includes an option that enables users to perform a local search query for a series of keywords, a zip code, city, state and Twitter generates a list of tweets from people in that area. A search for "plumbing and heating Framingham" within a 15 mile radius does not bring up one valid result, while the same search query on Superpages.com shows 25 results. This indicates that Twitter is still a relatively new medium, especially for local online marketing.
Only 5% of Americans are currently using Twitter, according to an Online The Harris Poll, conducted between March 31 and April 1, 2009. However, the more popular Twitter becomes, the more businesses are going to realize they have to have a presence on Twitter. Some large corporations have already adopted Twitter successfully for online marketing, customer service, collecting product feedback, announcing specials, without being perceived and as "spammy" or "advertising driven". Good examples are Comcast (@comcastcare) and Zappos (@zappo).
When current Twitter user growth holds up and when local businesses and online marketers learn how to use Twitter effectively, it can be a valuable tool for driving user engagement, building web site traffic and brand visibility, strengthen customer service and generating online/offline word of mouth.
Here are a few example of how Twitter can be used effectively for local online marketing and customer service:
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Customer service and Twitter is a perfect match. Twitter allows you to scan quickly through the messages you receive from customers and identify problems tweets. A quick single tweet may often be enough to provide an answer or solve a problem with very little waiting time for the customer. Twitter is a great tool for enhancing brand image and customer loyalty. |
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Huge gains can be made by local businesses such as restaurants that are reaching out to customers and the local community. Solid networking and restaurants are a logical match in stressed times. Combine social media with free food and you have marketing dynamite. |
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The marketing and business opportunities with Twitter are endless. Local businesses can tweet out special promotions in the form of coupon codes to their network of followers with a link to the promotions page where the coupon code can be used. |
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Once a business has built up a sufficient number of followers they can use Twitter to perform quick polls about what products, features, services their customers would want in new products. This is cheap and fast input for new product development and customer feedback from the client base. |
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Offline meetings, parties and wine tastings. Promoting a brand, product or service on Twitter is not limited to online activities. Tweetups, the gathering of tweeters that meet in person, is a way to bring the online and online marketing efforts together. |
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Search Engine Optimization Benefits
Since Twitter limits the message to 140 characters users rely heavily on links to the original content for more information. The Twitter links are non-follow, which means that they do not pass "link juice" and therefore have no Google page rank value and no rank boost in the search results for the web sites the links are pointed to.
How to Get Started With Twitter
Getting started with Twitter is relatively straightforward. Here are the basic steps:
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Sign-up for an account. If you are not on Twitter yet, join right away by completing and submitting the online sign-up form. There are a few things to consider when signing up. We advise businesses and individuals to lock up their business name or full name (first and last name) immediately. That way you avoid that someone brand jacks your name. If you have a short name that is easy to spell use your name as your username, otherwise choose a short and unique brand name as your username. Avoid using numbers and underscores in your username because this makes it harder to tweet from a mobile phone.
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Upload a recent picture and short bio.
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Twitter allows you to set-up a branded profile so customize your personal or business profile with one of the 12 available profile templates or create a custom profile with your company identity.
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Speaking Engagements
Clark University
Thursday, May 14, 2009 - 8:45-12 noon
Grace Conference Room
Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts
"Online Visibility and Advertising for Local Businesses"
Presenter: Louise Rijk
Click here to learn more.
Past Presentations
WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008
Las Vegas
“Integrating Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) into the Advertising Mix”
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the presentation
128 Business Expo 2008
The Westin Waltham-Boston Hotel
"Using Social Media to Connect with Prospects and Customers"
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the video.
495/MetroWest Business Expo
Sheraton Framingham Hotel
Pre-Expo Keynote Presentation
“A Strategic Approach to Integrated Marketing”
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the video.
Bentley College, 2008 - Waltham, MA
“Planning and Integrating a Targeted Internet Marketing Campaign”
Click here to play the video.
WebmasterWorld Pubcon 2007 - Las Vegas, NV
“Planning and Integrating a Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) Campaign”
Click here to play the video.
BizAction 2007 - Washington DC
"Email, Social Media and Search in the Overall Marketing Mix"
Click here to play the audio.
128 Business Expo 2007
"Blogging and Podcasting For Business"
Click here to play the video.
495/Metrowest Business Expo
Pre-Expo Keynote
"The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Advertising Medium"
Click here to play the video.
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If you would like more information on Internet Marketing, Consulting, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing, please
click here.
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Copyright © 1996-2009. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
251 West Central St., Suite 28, Natick, Massachusetts 01760, USA
Tel: 508-647-5151 Fax: 508-647-5150
E-mail: info@advmediaproductions.com
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