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What social media site provides the most value for your business?
Do you find that LinkedIn provides the most value? What about Digg, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? In what ways does it provide value to your business?
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9 Answers
Digg is a social bookmarking site - there are about 20-30 of these sites. If you check out www.Ping.FM you will see a list of these. You can also use Ping's free services to leverage your content development. My take on Social Media Marketing:
1) Agree with Sherman, Facebook is a good place to start, assuming this is a fit for your brand.
2) Be aware Social Media requires a time commitment on the front end, usage of Web 2.0 platforms and in some cases third party applications to leverage them (HootSuite and Tweetdeck for Twitter). Be prepared to invest, you won't see a real return on your marketing for a while.
3) The hidden power of Social Media Marketing is leveraging your content across multiple platforms; if on LinkedIn (as you asked) you can tie your Blog, Twitter, SlideShare, etc. accounts into your LinkedIn account to leverage content and time better.
4) The absolute best Social Media Marketing is Blog development - it's not as sexy and cool as Twitter and Facebook. But, at the end of the day, a Blog will do wonderful things for brand development, search engine traffic and it can be replicated across the social web as I pointed out above.
5) Twitter is a great Social Media Platform. But, it has it's own etiquette, knowledge of arcane terms to many (Tweet, ReTweet, Hashtags, Follow/Unfollow Etiquette, FollowFriday and more). Put your digital toe on the water via Twitter and listen and learn before you get into the mainstream.
It's a very transparent community, people will quickly grasp your "social voice." Key metric is "pay it forward" on Twitter via ReTweets and introducing people and engaging with others is critical to success. Many just broadcast out content and miss the real value.
Twitter serves over 19B searches per month and is now the number two search engine in the world behind Google - utilize keywords in your content and you will generate "real time" search results.
6) Establish Digital Touchpoints across the Social Web; these will help to generate traffic, valuable backlinks and brand awareness: Google Profile, FriendFeed, Listorious, Flickr, Google Reader (great for sourcing content), LinkedIn, PhotoBucket and others.
7) Finally, what's your content strategy? Think about this carefully - you can establish a presence on all of these social platforms easily but then you want to convey value to the community via your content.
Andrew, Zach and Maria all made cogent points. Although the challenge with putting your toe in the water to test a platform or marketing process is the increasing time commitments and mushrooming applications that add value to the individual platforms.But, agree with Zach - this can be done.
Also I couldn't over stress my point about leveraging content development. Once you have a system where you are cross distributing your content via multiple platforms; i.e Blog, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Posterous, Flick Google Profile, Ping.FM (now part of Seesmic), Shareholic, Likes, Friends, Followers, etc. you will drive much more brand impressions, subscriber sign ups, traffic and revenue.
It's time consuming and not easy to do. But, the payoff can be tremendous and will scale up nicely over time, with less work on the back end.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the demonstrated courtesy. I agree, Twitter has helped me generate new business, find good high quality strategic partners and quality traffic. I just connected with you via LI. ATB/LT
Chad
I think that like marketing in general, consistancy is key. If you take a look at your ideal clients, what SN sites are they using? those are the 3 to build a strategy around.
Maria
http://www.ElevatingYourBusiness.com
It is difficult to select just "one" social media site. If pressed, I would say Twitter. An incredible networking and business development tool. I have built a strong community, over a period of months. It takes discipline, sufficient time to devote to your community (maybe an hour or so daily) and the ability to listen, learn and share. 190 million Twitter users and counting (although a smaller percentage are power users who get the maximum benefit from the tool). If you try it, make sure to also select a good third-party software tool like TweetDeck. The interface that comes with Twitter.com was recently upgraded but still not an efficient tool to use. Good luck. Some great comments in this thread.
I agree with Lee 100% - The absolute best Social Media Marketing is Blog development. I signed up for Twitter because the people whose blogs I read are there and it also allows me to observe how they interact with other people. However, very few of them really "interact." Perhaps they have thousands of followers and can't be bothered to reply to your questions or comments. Then there are those who only schedule Twitter messages, most of which are self promotions. These people take out the "social" out of social media.
On the contrary, with blogs, you can see if you are really connecting with people. People leave comments, share your posts online. Even if they don't, look at your analytics. If you have a bounce rate of less than 70%, that's great! There are people who are reading your posts and looking for more.
Facebook is a great start when you want to get the most value for your business. I'm in network marketing and joining the mlm tribes has been very beneficial because you learn the up-to-date marketing strategies and you can leverage other bloggers to help you promote you and your business.
Lee has nailed it with his response in my opinion.
For me personally Twitter has been extremely beneficial, in that it has directly brought me clients who have been introduced to me by way of my Tweets.
I have made some very usefull contacts via LinkedIn as well, but never got any 'business' directly from Linkedin (plenty of job offers though if thats what your looking for, it is crawling with agencies)
I am hoping in time Focus will also prove beneficial.
Each social networking avenue provides it's own benefits and value.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Your Blog, MySpace even all have different strengths and weaknesses.
Lee has said much of what I would suggest. But I guess I would add, "try". Give every option some of your time and whichever one's seem to show better results for your business, move more time towards that one. Ultimately though, getting involved and at the very least being familiar with the options is a good start.
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