Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

What is Internet marketing? In short, Internet marketing is a marketing method which you will be promoting your products and services online. Many businesses are starting to realize the potential of the Internet and are developing dedicated Internet marketing departments to secure their online market share.

Why is Internet Marketing Powerful?
The Internet has become a popular medium where people spend their time participating in various discussions. They discuss about everything. Sex, work. shopping, cars, money and even their bosses. If you do not pay specific attention to the online world, you are not paying enough attention to your customers. This goes for Social media as well but thats another article…

They might be discussing about the field you are in, a problem that they want a product to solve and most importantly, they might be discussing about your company.

Internet Marketing for Market Research
When you got yourself started in Internet marketing, for most of the time, you will be doing keyword research using various tools and search engines. By applying the knowledge, you are able to identify whether there is a demand for a particular product or whether people have a need for the products that you are developing.

Market research is extremely vital for a business and no business owners should spend money developing something that no people will buy. Also, sites like eBay and Amazon provide crucial information on customers buying patterns. Thus, to get these results clearly and cheaply, you must move into Internet marketing and learn the knowledge and skills.

Internet Marketing – Cheap Marketing
Most small and medium size companies or sole traders have limited advertising funds. The Internet, in this case, is a perfect marketplace for these business owners. Why? Product owners and service providers can reach their end users and customers directly via the Internet, often without the need of spending thousands on advertisement costs.

Social Media and search engines can be utilized to secure and interact with customers. Building a close bond is much easier on the Internet. Thus, a considerable amount of knowledge on Internet marketing is advantageous for a business, especially in the coming few years as more and more people are getting online.

As you scout around for SEO services, you may wonder what sets one company’s SEO services apart from another’s. Companies which provide SEO services usually use different SEO philosophies, tools and methods for optimizing their clients’ websites. These different approaches are usually termed as “hats” SEO services usually come in three different hats:

Black Hat SEO Services
Black Hat SEO is known as SEO spamming. From the second term itself, you may have an idea of what this kind of SEO service offers. Black Hat SEO is centered on creating sites that are targeted at manipulating or tricking search engines for better site ranking.

Black Hat SEO relies heavily on automation to come up with large numbers of substandard pages and pulls links from other sites which are actually irrelevant. Consequently, this SEO approach usually gets poor or irrelevant search engine result pages or SERP quality.

What is advantageous with Black Hat SEO is that it can get your site on the top of search engine rankings in a matter of a short span of time. However, this is not a wise SEO services strategy in terms of web design perspective.

Worse, once search engines find out that your site maligns their results; your site may and will run the risk of getting banned or crashing on view. So if you want to get on top of search engine listings in a matter of days and are willing to take the risk of flouting some site behavior guidelines, Black Hat SEO services should do the trick for you.

White Hat SEO Services
For every black, there is always a white. The same is true for SEO services. White Hat SEO services, on the other hand, relies on the advantages of putting in relevant and quality content as well as effective marketing strategies to place sites on top of search engine rankings.

SEO services providers that offer White Hat SEO will focus mostly on your site contents. White Hat SEO providers will help you come up with contents that will attract people, and not search engines into your site.

You should know that content is a very important factor in SEO building (if not the most important). With good content, White Hat SEO services will be able to get you more inbound links from other relevant websites.

White Hat SEO is definitly considered to be the better SEO tool. It will not put your site in the risk for getting blacklisted and does not violate any search engine SEO guidelines.

Most importantly, visitors who check your site will most likely be converted easily with your great content.

Grey Hat SEO Services
Grey Hat SEO is mid-way between the two tools above and is all about the balance between risk and reward. There are actually a wide number of SEO services solutions categorized under this. Some Grey Hat SEO services may tend to use more dubious strategies and take even bigger risks to produce fast and high search engine rankings. While many Gray Hat SEO services methods obey search engine guidelines, others might put you at risk. If you opt for SEO services using Grey Hat, be sure about what you are exactly subjecting your online site to.

Which hat should you choose?
Is Simple terms, White Hat is good SEO and Google Friendly; Black Hat SEO will get you banned from the search engines, while Grey Hat is for the most part, dicey The main issue is that if you live by the simple life rule, “what goes round, comes around” you would not go down the road of using a Black hat SEO in the first place.

The primary reason for using a so called White Hat SEO Company is that they are ethical, and have spent time and money to truly understand the workings of Google and the Internet.

YOUR COMPANIES REPUTATION IS IN THEIR HANDS!

Till next time

Outsourcing to an SEO company for online advertising needs does not mean a company and its employees are left sitting all day waiting for results. A client still needs to participate up to a certain extent with an SEOs work so that the latter may produce more effective results. However, some actions on part of the client may do more harm than good to an SEO’s efforts of bringing in more traffic to a website. Understanding how SEOs work and how it yields benefits for a client should give the latter an idea about which practices they should refrain from that can decrease the efficiency of SEO.

So your company has decided to embark on an online campaign to boost sales. With so much marketing clatter filling up the Internet these days, you decide to hire someone who can bring your business to the forefront from search engine wrangling, the services of an SEO expert.

At this point, you will surely be faced with a dilemma, whether to outsource your SEO needs or establish a new segment within your company, or to go for an in-house SEO department. Such problem has been argued over and addressed by many experts either in the more ideal academic perspective or pragmatic business-management approach, each espousing outsourcing SEO needs is the better choice or otherwise. All technical arguments aside, experience has proved that outsourcing your SEO needs with a proven expert is the better choice.
Despite what almost everyone says, not just anyone can be an SEO expert. It is core competency and requires certain talent and skill, namely creativity, analysis, knowledge of the target market, to name a few. Granted, talent is innate; this does not mean someone whom you hire who has that as the in-house SEO ‘expert’ can produce the increased revenue your company desires. The above-mentioned skills are required and those can only be developed over time.

If your company is embarking on that online campaign with the expectation of immediate results, you definitely do not have the time to wait for that newly hired talent to blossom into the SEO expert you require. SEO firms, however, already have within their arsenal people who can be rightfully called SEO experts.

These are people have both the talent and experience required by firms that rely on SEO to suit their business needs. Firms which offer SEO services to companies seeking to outsource their needs have made it their business to develop the people who possess the right skill set so that they may deliver definite results. Most companies fail to comprehend the dent to their finances which could be caused by the establishment of an In House SEO. This is most unfortunate since most companies establish in house SEO segments precisely as a cost-cutting measure. The cost of hiring the services of a seasoned SEO firm could be ten times more than the cost of hiring a newbie as an in house SEO employee.

It bears stressing, however, that quality SEO services can be done in a “one-time-big-time” fashion. SEO expert comes in, does his work, and you have a site which ranks top in all search engines. Choosing the right SEO firm is, of course, an integral choice for your company so that you can be assured of the quality of the work. This is in stark contrast to hiring in house SEO employees, you have to spend time and money for training and not be assured of the quality of his work. It has already been stressed that not everyone can be an SEO expert.

In any case, the costs of establishing an in house SEO segment are heavier for the company in the long run. It is likewise prudent for companies to withhold disbelief when they choose to outsource their SEO needs. SEO is not some kind of magical pill which suddenly increases online revenues to 200%. Advocates for in-house SEO services attribute this to the fact outsourced services lack the personal understanding of both the company and its product hence the lack of stellar results. However, it is necessary to remember how SEO are supposed to help companies. What SEO does is to put your company ahead of rivals if a potential customer searches for your product, it does not make him click the ‘buy’ button on your site. If after hiring the services of an SEO, the volume of online sales do not pick up, evaluate your product and site as a whole before you blame the poor SEO service provider. See if your site’s content is user and reader friendly and if your product is something a customer would actually want. There are so many things proponents of in house SEO services can say to you, but in the end, you only need to ask yourself this “Does my company need to have specialized in SEO services?” Chances are your answer is in the negative.

You’re selling products, not SEO services. Moreover, having an in house SEO employee is not necessary as the work could be done in a one-time fashion and you’re not really assured of the quality of his work, unless you pirate an experienced SEO expert as a permanent employee which would then lead back to the argument that SEO work is primarily a one-time thing. Really, the better choice is to outsource your SEO needs, unless of course, you actually want to become an SEO firm.

So everyone wants to be on top in Google, but you don’t always get what you want now do you? Before things were so much more simple; you advertise, you give good service, you get customers. Now you need to compete with other companies via the Internet as well.

Being number one (that includes page 1 cause lets face it, there are just too many of us competing) in the search engines is critical as it can do wonders to businesses all over. I mean you don’t even need to rent a place anymore if you have a great seat on Google! But how do you get there?

There are so many things you can do from SEO - link building, submitting articles to different sites, to having landing pages with promotions. So what really helps? Right now, I’m going to talk about two hot topics, Google Page Rank and Social media index.

What are they and how do they help?

Google Page Rank is a bit on the confusing side as even Google has poor information on it. In the simplest of words, it’s a voting system, and an American voting system at that since some votes are more important than others. Google will take the link votes and determine which pages are more important based on them. Then the scores are used along with a lot of other factors to determine if the page will rank well in a search.

Google itself says, and I quote, ”PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.”

Now what about Social Media Index? Well, normally we thought someone’s web influence was measured by how successful his or her blog is, and that was done by counting how many people subscribed or linked to it. Now that’s not credible as people use different social media tools to get out there. So how do the two work with each other? They don’t. The battle comes in the concepts of the two. Page Rank is supposed to be the ‘producer’ attracting the ‘consumer’ to their page. With Social Media invading every single computer, links are being passed on to friends and friends of friends and it’s no long a producer to consumer act, it’s getting all tangles up. The consumers are talking and listening to each other. So is Page Rank still really needed? With the consumers helping the consumers, the producers have less and less say than they did before. What do you think should happen now?

Where have YOU been?

Unless you have lived in a cave the last 4 years, you have probably heard of this. It is a rocking hot social networking site that seems to be almost everywhere today. It is on the news. It is on the radio. It is on the minds of millions of folks a day.

It is called “Facebook” and over 350 million people are active on this site.

Ok- I know that you may be asking,” A LAW about facebook?” Yes, 10 of them for marketing and business success in what you do. There are marketing laws that all marketers and business professionals must follow if they are going to have Success in the marketplace online.

It is the same for Facebook.

Lets cover them briefly:

1) The Law of Visibility on Facebook.

You MUST be visible on facebook of you are going to get your message out. You must spend time on facebook and get to know people. You must put yourself together a “facebook blueprint” and work it. How many hours a week are you going to be seen on FB? How many times are you going to befriend someone this week? How many times are you going to upload photos this week? All of these things put you in the ‘Visibility Zone” on facebook, and on the radar as far as people on facebook. Be SEEN and be THERE on a daily basis.

2) The Law of the Powerful Facebook Profile.

Why would people want to get to know you? One of the first things they check out is your facebook profile. What does it say- but better yet- what does it DO? Does it make people curious and want to get to know you? Does it make them think? Does it make them smile? Does it make them see that you have Value for their life and can help change it?

Powerful facebook profiles are NOT based on what is said in your profile- but what it DOES.

Does it direct them to DO something? Does it tell them you are person they MUST know? Or someone that has a nice picture and a nice profile- with no magnetism? Put yourself OUT THERE and tell the world WHY they need you as a friend, and get them to take action towards YOU.

3) The Law of the Facebook WALL.

You MUST use your Wall to market or message. many folks regard their Wall as a communication utility like email. It is not that. You already have a facebook email. The Wall is for you to BUILD- BRICK BY BRICK- MESSAGE BY MESSAGE- NOTE BY NOTE- VIDEO BY VIDEO- your Brand on Facebook. Every time something happens with you- it goes on your Wall. Don’t stare at the wall- CLIMB THE SUCKER and make your message the PEAK of the page- and keep yourself out there with the Wall. And answer the messages on your Wall. Thank people for sharing with you their visit or message. This will show up on THEIR wall. This will set you apart from most on facebook. The Wall is simply a BILLBOARD of what you are doing and your friends are doing on Facebook. Use it often and wisely.

4) The Law of Your Facebook Network.

You are part of a local facebook network and you have access to that network to befriend them. I live in Birmingham Michigan, and the network i am a part of is the Detroit network. There are 640,926 people in my network that I could potentially MEET LIVE in a local place and get to know them and connect with them. You have local folks as well. Where do you find your network?

Click on “settings” and then click on “network.” You will find it there. This is a GOLD MINE of people in your local area to CONNECT and Construct new trust bridges that may lead to business down the road.

5) The Law of the Facebook Notifications.

This is an overlooked and rarely talked about utility. Notifications are part of your “facebook email system.” Go to “email” at the top of your Facebook profile page, and then click on “notifications.”This is list of who is thinking about you, talking about you, including you in tags, and generally is pointing to you. This is a GOLD MINE of people that have PROVEN they are behind you and willing to make you a part of their Facebook experience. Pay attention to the facebook notifications. Thank them for their thoughts of you on their Wall and let them know you appreciate it. Include them as well on your tags and other activity on facebook. The notifications are GOLD and is a prospecting Vault of Leads. And make sure you stay CONNECTED to them.

6) The Law of Facebook Link Love.

The Link application on Facebook is a HOT commodity. It allows you to post a link that you like and then sends it out on the news feed that is on your home page. It picks up the image that you want on the link page, and allows it to be a LIVE link. Send out other people’s LINK and givem some LOVE. Do NOT just send out your own links. Let others do that. Find interesting links of others and send them out.

WHY? EXPOSURE for you. You will be given credit for the link. People LOVE link love. If you send out a LOT of other people’s links on facebook, they will start sending out YOUR links. Been there done that.

7) The Law of Facebook Groups.

Join groups. Join a LOT of Groups. Start your OWN groups. The join MORE groups. Why? Here are a few reasons: EXPOSURE. CONNECTION to other Group members. AUTHORITY. Start your own and be a Leader. INCREASE YOUR REACH.Groups extend your reach into Facebook. MULTIPLIED PROSPECTS. There are more people in a group — then on a profile page.

Duh. Build a list in your own group and then you can become an admin and email messages to them. Make them messages of VALUE and interest.

8 ) The Law of Facebook Events.

Attend events. Attend more Events. And then attend many MORE events. Why? It allows you to leave a message on the events page wall, and create exposure. I attend at least 2 facebook events every week- to learn- and to network. Events can be found on the new Facebook page in the upper right under “Upcoming”-these are the events that are upcoming. There is one unique twist: You have birthdays under the “upcoming” tag- and you can send presents to folks. THIS will get their attention as it shows up on their wall and the news feed as well. Attend as many events as you can. make them worth your while- learn and grow from them. BUT’always leave a RSVP message about attending or not- with an encouraging message. This will show your professionalism, and caring.

Event UP! This will do you well on facebook. Put the term “events” in the search box, and it will find every event that is going on in your network of friends. It is a GOLD MINE of new possibilties of business. Become a master of events!

9) The Law of Facebook Multimedia- Videos and Photos.

People LOVE photos and videos. They are the most looked at and watched pages on facebook. Make some videos and upload them. Upload some photographs. Not only will the be seen on your wall and the facebook news feed, but also will allow you to “tag” others on these. This means that you can pick out people you have befriended and let them know you are thinking of them. And when you tag someone- it shows up on THEIR wall. Not isn’t THAT cool? It is called EXPOSURE!

10) The Law of the Facebook NEWS FEED.

This is the big kahuna of Exposure on facebook. This gets you out to ALL of your friends and creates a massive exposure vehicle that can keep your brand in front and recognized. You also will be many times on the “featured” part of the new news feed on the right. This gives you HUGE exposure. Whatever you do, like change your status, upload a video, write and publish a note, or just comment on another person’s message on the facebook news feed- it SHOWS UP in the news Feed. Be seen- and be seen often if you are trying to brand yourself on facebook.

Yes, you need to establish relationships, and build community. But if you are going to MARKET on facebook-then you need to at least get a guideline of what and how to do it. The 10 Social Media Laws of Facebook hopefully gave you some idea in your social media marketing.

The Social Media News Release is a template available for the sole purpose of incorporating social media and multimedia into press releases. And while it may sound like an absolutely ingenious idea, it probably is not the best use of time and money for your business. Here are 6 reasons why using a SMNR may be one of the biggest mistakes you are making.

1. People Do not Read Them. Let s face it, this is not the best way to get your information out to the general public. The number of people who actually view releases on news release websites is quite small. There are better ways to reach your potential customers that are not nearly as expensive or time-consuming.

2. They are Expensive. The optimal use of an SMNR is to send a Social Media News Release with Multimedia, and It is expensive. Even a limited distribution will cost you hundreds of dollars at minimum. Compare this to the cost of writing a blog, which will also allow you to include images and video. The blog is far cheaper and gives you a much higher return on your investment.

3. There is No Critical Mass. One of the most important aspects of marketing with social media is that you can gather a huge number of like-minded or like-interested people in the same place. If you use an SMNR to send your information out to 500 websites, you may only get one or two comments on each website. If that is the case then your interested parties are not talking to each other, which defeats the purpose of social media marketing. Not to mention the time and tedium involved in responding to comments on each of the 500 websites to which your release was sent. Consider instead how you might get those 500 commenters to have a conversation with each other.

4. They Do not Help Your SEO. The whole point of news releases in general is to get inbound links to your site. And while SMNRs contain links, those links are not optimized and generally link to resources other than your website. Use the online Press Release Grader to see how your SMNR release stands up. You will most likely find that you have too many links, and that diminishes the effectiveness of your release greatly.

5. They Do not Help You Reach Your Goals. The whole point of marketing your business is to get people to come to your website and get them to buy your products. So why would you spend money to put your information on another website? We have already noted that SMNRs generally do not result in optimal links to your site, so there is really no sense in using them for that purpose.

6. They Do not Allow You to Use Your Own Mutlimedia Accounts. Did you know that if you want to include a video in your SMNR then you have to upload that video to the news release service s YouTube account? That is right! Never mind that you have already uploaded the video to your own account; now you have to upload it to theirs as well. This means that your video is sitting in an account with thousands of other videos that are not at all related to your product or service. So if a potential customer actually finds your videos and wants to see more from your business, he has to search a lot harder than if all of your videos were lumped together in your account.

Another problem is similar to the one we mentioned in #3. The comments left on the new release service s account are separate from the ones left on your account, so your commenters do not have the opportunity to interact with one another. And you have to visit your video in both places to respond to all of the comments.

You are much better off simply creating your own release, without images or video, and sending it over the wire, specially if you do not have the know-how to optimize them. Save the really cool release for your own website where you have control over what happens to it. You will save time and money, and the results will be greatly beneficial.

The whole notion of Andy Warhol’s statement that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes seems to be true in the 21st century. It plays out everyday on reality television shows as well as talk television, shows featuring judges and of course a variety of news magazine programs.

This obsession with popularity has expanded to the Internet. Today social media can offer the potential of fame in a new arena. You can sign up for multiple social media sites like Facebook and MySpace and then compliment the attention you might be receiving by adding Twitter. This last resource allows you to keep your adoring masses up to date with everything you feel like sharing.

• “I’m going to the grocery store…”
• “I’m going in to ask for a raise…”
• “Just kidding…”
• “I’m going to buy my kids new shoes…”
• “It’s 12 degrees and I forgot my gloves…”

For whatever reason it seems that there are those who are interested in following your daily moves. That may sound like a perfect breeding ground for a stalker, but then again you can limit who can actually read your Twitter. You can also limit who can read your social media page. You don’t have to accept every friend invitation that comes along.

These social media sites have an incredible volume of online traffic and an impressive list of new signups on a daily basis. New applications are being designed all the time for these sites and users are addicted to the way these sites allow them to keep in contact with people they may have once known as well as new friends.

Social media can be a great place for Pay Per Click advertising. The blog or comment posts can result in the discovery of motivated buyers.

Yes, it’s true that there may be spammers who will ask you to be their friend and then load up your comment box with marketing links you don’t want, but the best way to deal with that is to simply remove them as friends and then delete their posts. Then, I suppose, you could become a bit more discriminating in whom you accept as friends.

People enjoy using these sites because they are free. They are only free because they are supported by advertising. Without the advertising there would be no way for the service to remain free of charge.

As long as there are people who want to connect with friends around the globe there will remain a place for social media. There will also be a sense of being important because we have friends who comment or post on our wall. We return the favor and new friends find us. We develop a highly personalized community where we get to choose who will be accepted. It may be the ultimate form of discrimination, but it creates the sense of safety we may need when engaging other ‘friends’ about our day or the things we are looking to accomplish.

Advertising will join us on the journey allowing our star status to remain strong, and our fifteen minutes of fame to be renewed on a daily basis.

According to The Free Dictionary online the definition of success is as follows:1. the achievement of something attempted. 2. the attainment of wealth, fame, or position. 3. a person or thing that is successful.In order to achieve any of the above criteria marketing to the new Web 2.0 or in the social media arena as we know it today you, first of all, have to know your target audience and what makes them tick.
What drives them to spend so much time in the social media environment? What are they hoping to gain from these activities? What are their needs and wants? And most importantly; how do they feel about being targeted as a potential consumer in this situation? To achieve any level of success with the social media market each of these areas must be addressed in detail.
First of all, why do people spend so much of their free time on MySpace or Facebook? What is the lure or attraction of these social media sites? On some of the forums, such as MySun, people go so far as to say it’s an addiction. One female contributor is quoted as saying, “I was addicted to MySpace. I wanted to sit there 24/7. I’ve deleted it now, can’t be doing with it anymore, as for face book well I’m on there now but I think I’m gonna delete that too. It’s nuts.”
Another 26 year old female said, “I love Facebook, my sister got me hooked on it. Before then I didn’t see the fuss, but now I do. The more you do on it, the more you love it.” And yet another participant, a 34 year old male stated, “I use MySpace to keep in touch with everyone, not addicted though. Pop in once and awhile, and it’s helpful. Found friends from years ago.”
From each of those comments you see a common thread emerging. Two of the respondents mentioned “addiction” and one used the phrase “hooked on it”. All of these people constitute a potential target market, for Internet Marketers, no matter what their reasons for spending so much time socializing online. So it follows that in order to be successful marketing to this audience, the marketer too, must spend time online socializing with and gaining the trust of these potential clients.
In order to accomplish this you have to be transparent with these individuals. Whatever you do don’t try to deceive them by pretending to be someone you’re not just to gain favor with them. These people are there to make friends and establish relationships and that has to be the goal of the Internet Marketer as well. You have to respect their environment and their reasons for being there. If not you’re doomed to failure even before you begin.
Secondly what are their needs and wants? In order to determine this, the Internet Marketer must again establish relationships with these people in order to find out what their situation is and what they are looking for at the present time and in the future. If they aren’t looking for what you’re selling then at least you’ve made a friend online and maybe the next person will be in the market for your product or service.
Finally how do they feel about being targeted by Internet Marketers in their environment? Again in this situation the Internet Marketer must always keep in mind that these people are in what they consider to be their space, pardon the pun. You must respect their feelings and approach them as if you’re in their home. The Internet Marketer can be viewed as an outsider or an intruder if they’re too aggressive and lose sight of the fact that they are on their turf, so to speak.
Finally, along with being genuine in your approach, have fun with it. That’s what these sites are meant to be for the most part and if you’re having fun and being honest about your intentions then you can be very successful marketing to the social media audience online.

The world of Socialized Media is maturing and along with it, our knowledge, expertise, reach, and personal and represented brands are only flourishing. It will continue as long as we realize that these new social tools and networks require an entirely new commitment and embodiment of what we personify and how we can be a genuine resource to the people who define the communities that are important to us.

In Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere report, the company observed that blogging is becoming mainstream, leading the way for an Active Blogosphere – defined as the ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation. I’d also add that as the Active Blogosphere further permeates our daily information consumption and distribution processes, that the Social Web equally becomes pervasive. But, it’s so much more than an Active SocialMediaSphere. As networks become densely populated and new communities arise and thrive, we’re experiencing a fundamental shift in content creation, distribution, and consumption, thus creating an Active and Participatory Media society that is inspiring and seeding a more literate and enlightened generation.

 Blogs and social networks are now part of our daily lives.

* comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

- Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US

- Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million

- Total internet audience 188.9 million

 

* eMarketer (May 2008)

- 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)

- 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

 

* Universal McCann (March 2008)

- 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US

- 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US

- 77% of active Internet users read blogs

 

YouTube = 10 percent of all internet traffic (source: Ellacoya Networks) 

YouTube & Wikipedia among top brands (source: brandchannel.com) 

Five of the top 10 websites are social (source: Alexa)

Over 100 million blogs exist (source: Technorati)

120,000 new blogs launched every day (source: Technorati)

1.5 million posts per day (17 per second) (source: Technorati)Everyone is a Social Media Expert

  You’re a purveyor of new media, but then again, so is everyone else it seems. So what are you going to do to rise above the fray while also delivering true, incontestable value to those you’re helping?  

Are you an evangelist or a consultant?  

Are you an extension of your company brand or are you an employee?  

Are you a leader, follower, or are you meandering through your profession?  

Are you confined to the role of a social marketer or do you represent something with longer-term value?  

At the end of the day, everything that’s transpiring around us is actually improving the existing foundation for our business, from service to marketing to product development to sales to executive management, and everything in between.  

Social marketing revitalizes and empowers every facet of our workflow and its supporting ecosystem. Seeing the bigger picture and tying our knowledge to the valuable feedback from our communities will help us guide businesses towards visibility, profitability, relevance and ultimately customer loyalty.  

In every single case, it doesn’t just take an expert; it requires a champion to make an impact.   You are that champion.