Which Medium When?
Although I make a living helping businesses attract new customers and sales through online media, I don’t quickly jump on every new social medium platform.
This is because I’ve learned from experience that:
- some are huge time wasters that provide very little meaningful communication,
- others don’t last long enough to be proven as effective social networking or marketing systems, and
- others change format so often that no one wants to keep up with the latest version of the system (over engineering-itis).
Therefore, I read reviews of new systems, question staff, friends and associates about their experiences with the new systems, test some for personal use and wait until there is sufficient evidence that it is worth spending time and energy to fully learn and implement another system.
As a result of this process I have chosen to set up LinkedIn.com and Plaxo.com accounts to keep connected with business associates. I also have set up a Twitter.com profile to follow a business associate’s tweets and found that other business associates were looking for me on Twitter. Then I began to set up Facebook.com pages – one for personal use and others for client businesses.
So has this helped business?
Yes and no. It has:
- increased the number of incoming links and visitors to websites that I manage,
- helped me keep updated on who’s doing what where, and
- helped renew and strengthen business relationships.
However, it has not brought significant volumes of new clients or sales yet.
So today when a prospective client asks me whether he/she should invest in social media, I say, “Only if your website, blog and email communications are already optimized and producing new customers and more sales. Websites, blogs and email marketing are still very effective strategies and the new social communication systems do not replace them, they simply augment them.”
As for which order to implement traditional web and newer web marketing strategies, it does depend somewhat on the market niche and the business’ marketing budget. However, the typical succession is
- website with on page and in site natural search optimization strategies implemented (website may or may not include a blog),
- off page optimization of the website (i.e. keyword rich links from other well-optimized, geographically or topically on target websites including local map search sites, online directories and other industry-related web pages),
- pay per click marketing,
- email marketing,
- article marketing,
- social marketing (selection of specific strategies such as LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, MySpace, etc. depends upon market niche and ideal customer demographics).
To help businesses develop a prioritized outline of possible marketing mediums, I offer a one hour complimentary consultation. To schedule your complimentary consultation, please phone me at 206.244.9092 or email info@4cesi.com.