Understanding the Importance of Social Media for Offline Businesses

Long-time business owners may not think social media and offline business should coexist, but in realtiy, and particularly in today’s marketplace, a social media presence is essential. Brick and mortar businesses can use social media for branding, gaining name recognition and visibility at an extremely reasonable cost. Social media and inbound marketing are valuable tools in an advertising toolkit and should be an integral part of any business’s marketing strategy. Social media is also called the new media marketing.

How can you become involved in social media as an offline business? Start with a blog about your business and what you do. Be sure to update the blog often and encourage participation by way comments. You can research, discovering which social networks your customers use and become a presence on those networks. For example, you can create a Facebook page and invite customers and friends to visit your page. The page will link back to your blog and drive traffic back to your site and provide additional exposure for your business, thus increasing brand awareness.

Twitter is a very popular social media network. Most followers on Twitter are very loyal and will help promote your brand providing you engage without spamming. You must learn the social rules of Twitter and follow them accordingly or you will lose more clients than you will gain but if you use the proper etiquette you will profit for your involvement.

To make social networking work for your company, you must provide useful content that people will want to share. Bloggers today are becoming a leading source of information; work on building relationships with other bloggers through social media networks and they will provide valuable links for you.

Several social networks are specialized for businesses.

Examples include:

LinkedIn

ecademy

Xing

XeeSm

Naymz

viadeo

Explore these and other business/social media sites for the best fit for your company. It may not be wise just to join a large number of networks that you cannot maintain.

LinkedIn is one of the largest and most popular social networking platforms for business. By forming a LinkedIn group related to your company, you can attract possible sales leads. Ask your employees and others in your field to join your group. The group page will be linked to your blog, so users can find you easily. As an expert in your field, you can also answer questions on LinkedIn and gain exposure in that way.

Ecademy, spelled ecademy (small “e”), is another social network for companies and has grown quickly, having a loyal membership base. Ecademy allows you to post your business profile and connect with other entrepreneurs. Business owners can receive advice as well as promote their own services worldwide. Networking groups are a popular destination on ecademy.

Xing claims to be the number one business/social network in Europe. Over eight million people use Xing. Xing sets up connections between businesses so they can find others to meet their needs and sell their services and products. You can search among all the professionals listed to find the right match for your needs. Xing also features groups and popular events, where you can meet other network users. Job seekers will find a separate application for them on Xing.

Naymz is an online network that offers some different features from some of the other business networks. Over one million people subscribe to this free service. Naymz offers a blogging feature and identity verification, among other things. The main idea on Naymz is to establish a positive reputation. Users build their reputation score through various assessments. If you have a high-scoring reputation on Naymz, the network will provide you with a sponsored Google listing. Naymz also assists in monitoring internet sources for any time your name appears online.

XeeSM states that they are “a social business application platform.” Professionals can keep all their contacts and their individual social networks together in an orderly fashion. Salespeople are able to reach clients through any number of social media; therefore, time and money are saved. XeeSM also provides a way for recruiters and job seekers to find one another quickly. XeeSM also offers various applications, including a business level app that is quite useful.

Brick and mortar business should embrace new media, inbound marketing, Web 2.0, etc. Social media is a low-cost way to build your image worldwide. Social media and inbound marketing are the future of advertising; it is better to become involved sooner than later but in the right way, with an overall marketing strategy designed to create brand awareness and a unique online identity, the ultimate Internet image.

Would you like to talk about your business’s social media strategy? Allow us to help you create brand awareness and a social media identity that will connect with your target audience!

Contact Us Today!

John Zajaros

The Ultimate Internet Image
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
216-712-7004 (bus)
440-821-7018 (cell)
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

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An Understanding of New Media, Inbound Marketing is
Crucial When Attempting to Create The Ultimate Internet Image!

New Media Marketing and/or Inbound Marketing

New Media Marketing is a fairly new label for a well-established concept, relationship/referral marketing.

New media marketing is simply relationship and referral marketing with a Web 2.0, viral twist.

New media marketing is engaged in by online and offline businesses attempting to develop an online community, a following, a congregation, an aggregation of loyal, even raving fans!

The business following, the congregation, thus allows for and even encourages loyal customers, or raving fans, to come together, share experiences, tell stories, and offer anecdotes about their relationship and experiences with the Internet business or traditional brick and mortar concern in question.

The sharing of information enhances the company’s brand and solidifies the relationship between client and business, thus providing the business with a steady stream of repeat customers. I like the label “clients” much better…for a myriad of reasons.

The Warm Market

The most expensive client to develop is the cold one, the client with no precious experience with the business engaged in a marketing campaign.

Interestingly, while the previous statement has been proven time and again, many businesses, in fact most businesses, pursue the cold call, the cold lead, instead of developing a relationship with and marketing to their warm market, the clients they have developed over the weeks, months, and even years leading up to the present advertising and marketing campaign…often at great cost, both in dollars and resources (also dollars).

The new media experience often includes blogs, forums, podcasts (a rapidly emerging and very exciting area for expression), social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), and even certain extended mastermind groups (e.g., StomperNet, Infusionsoft, and others).

All of the aforementioned platforms, and a myriad of others, contribute to the viral effect created by the client’s positive experience and passed on….as they tell two people, and those two tell two people, and so on, and so on, and so on!

Just like the hair commercial: the viral effect of new media marketing!

Significantly, hundreds and often thousands will sing the praises of a business plugged in to and fully engaged in the new media, Web 2.0 experience. The new media marketing strategy, and the viral effect of such a marketing campaign, enhances the brand and creates opportunities for multiple sales over many weeks, months, and, again, years.

One of the best arguments for a business to engage in and develop a new media marketing strategy is the idea that outbound advertising, meaning intrusive, in-your-face, traditional advertising, has lost its influence on consumers. If in fact, it ever had much of one to begin with.

Evidence demonstrates conclusively that there has been a shift away from consumers simply accepting outbound advertising (i.e., newspaper, radio, Yellow Pages, junk mail, etc.) as something they must endure in order to make an intelligent purchasing decision.

Again, the data suggests that consumers are engaged in search driven buying behavior, they are taking an active role from beginning to end. Google has become a verb.

As in:

“To Google” or “I ‘Googled’ it the other day and then went out and bought the car I found online.”

Consumers are making buying decisions based on Internet research, “Googling,” and on referrals provided by followers, friends, and connections they have met online.

Interestingly, it has also been demonstrated rather conclusively that consumers are more inclined to take the word of a like-minded peer online, even if they have never actually met them, than to buy into the corporate-doublespeak, the outbound advertising spiel launched at them, often in invasive fashion, by traditional television ads (restroom breaks and trips to the fridge), radio (I change the channel, that’s why we have so many buttons! Right?), direct mail (making a comeback when done effectively but most is cat box filler), and newspaper advertising (expensive and impossible to track, also for the cats and even the bird cages). I hear newspapers are also good for cleaning windows.

New Media Marketing has a myriad of advantages over traditional, outbound advertising!

This trend will only continue over time, as millions find the Internet daily, hand-held connectivity is increasing exponentially, and the following trend continues:

*The Yellow Pages grows mold in the closet! (see the video)

*iPods, MP3 players, and CDs replace music on the radio!

*People get their news via the Internet…never to open a paper again! (except as liners and for windows!)

The fact is, there is still a place for outbound advertising but it will never be what it once was…the consumer would probably never allow it anyway!

To succeed offline, in a traditional brick and mortar business, or online as an affiliate, in an e-commerce “store” or in any number of other ways, new media marketing must be understood and implemented, particularly in this economy and with consumers growing wiser by the minute.

The combination of a down economy and an educated consumer means if a business, any business, isn’t fully committed and equally engaged in the new media marketing process…they may not make it! Or at the very least, the business will lose a lot of money, money they could have been making and spending to make more money.

The choice is an obvious one…or so one would think. Interestingly, people resist change, even business people, and even when the advice and service is quite affordable. It is human nature to resist change. It is also in the nature of most businesses to fail in the first 10 years…the decision seems a simple one…or is it?!

It is certainly the profitable one:

New Media Marketing works!

Contact me anytime for comments and questions…or just leave them here!

Prof John P J Zajaros Sr
216-712-6526
216-539-7412
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

PS, For a no obligation inbound marketing consultation, including a new media strategy assessment and a complete competitive analysis, call me at either number above. Or email me for more information. Call 24/7 the machine is always on.

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The Questions Every Business Must Ask Before, During, and After Each and Every Inbound Marketing Campaign

Many companies pay huge sums of money, either to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Bing) for pay-per-click sponsored advertising or to SEO firms, to get to page one, the first page for various coveted keyword phrases responsible for generating leads, traffic, prospects, and ultimately, sales.

While both inbound marketing strategies may be effective, they are certainly not the most effective methods overall, both in terms of costs and/or results, for dealing with the marketing conundrum, the puzzle presented by Google and the other search engines.

The puzzle?

How does a business, either an online, Internet-based company or a traditional brick and mortar business, get the most exposure in the least amount of time and for the least amount of money?

In other words, how can a company optimize not only exposure, the ultimate Internet image and presence, but how can I do it in a cost effective manner?

How does a company optimize the ROI, return on investment?

These are the questions every company, online or offline, participating in online marketing or, as it is now referred to, inbound, new media marketing, needs to be able to understand and address. Unless a company can properly address these questions, these issues that cut to the heart of both short term and long term Internet marketing strategies and efforts, they are going about it in the wrong way.

As noted previously, there is a revolution underway, a transition within a transition. The Internet has forever altered how we spend money on sales and marketing campaigns. The shift is two-fold at its most fundamental level, and there are transitions within transitions, the state of Internet marketing, and thus the state of inbound marketing, is fluid, in a constant state of flux, evolving as knowledge of how to fully optimize the platform and its strategies are understood at a greater and deeper level.

The initial transition has occurred within and away from outbound advertising, the traditional in-your-face, intrusive advertising (e.g., Yellow Pages, television, radio, billboards, etc.), to a consumer oriented, search driven marketing strategy, later to be referred to as inbound or new media marketing. Within this transition several more have taken place. However, the most significant and interesting shift has been in the social media milieu because it is reshaping the Internet at a fundamental level. As the latter continues to occur, how we target and reach various segments of the Web 2.0, social media population is defining inbound marketing.

The use of social media and video marketing, along with the emergence of the blog, social bookmarking, and the mini or micro-blogging phenomenon have reshaped the strategies of companies big and small, both traditional brick and mortar companies moving online and emerging Internet marketing concerns across a variety of niches.

Ultimately, the transition is far from over, yet one thing is a certainty, the old media style of advertising, the outbound method of marketing is fading and the new media, inbound marketing approach to client and customer acquisition is here for the foreseeable future. The ROI may be incredible, given the proper strategy and an understanding of inbound marketing.

The next article in this series: The Use of Video and Social Media to Achieve High Levels of Search Engine Visability! will deal with how to integrate these two powerful models into your inbound marketing to create the Ultimate Internet Image long term!

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
The Ultimate Internet Image – International
216-539-7412
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

PS, Call for a free consultation and video marketing strategy workup.

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The Ultimate Internet Image is a consulting and training company with one goal: Your complete satisfaction!

We are involved in and focussed on the various social media networks and social bookmarking platforms. Additionally, we are involved in developing an innovative, complete, and up-to-date strategy to keep pace with current trends and in order to assure you achieve The Ultimate Internet Image. We have just signed on a brilliant new programmer, already involved in creating social networking software geared towards simplifying and streamlining your online marketing experience. UII is focused on future, innovative applications development. The Ultimate Internet Image International is orientated towards marketing novices and newcomers, as well as seasoned marketing experts and software developers looking to stay abreast of the latest trends in inbound marketing.

Finally, The Ultimate Internet Image is an Internet marketing agency, an inbound marketing consultancy, and a digital marketing mastermind. UII can meet all of your web-based design requirements and assist you in meeting and overcoming your unique Internet application development challenges and concerns. The Ultimate Internet Image is also a full service SEO specialist, skilled in attraction and integration marketing, as well as various advertising strategies using Web 2.0 and social media networks and platforms.

Internet marketing is once again in a transitionary phase, shifting from a traditional, website centered approach, to a more complete and holistic blog and social media strategy. As discussed previously, this also entails a dynamic shift from an outbound, advertiser driven approach to consumer driven, inbound marketing. It is imperative both online and traditional brick and mortar businesses stay on top of this latest trend. UII will help you better understand and implement the various strategies necessary to achieve the ultimate online business presence.

Remember:

Your Success is our Success!

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

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How to Build a Hub or a Linchpin for Your Inbound, Internet Marketing Campaign – Blogging and Social Media Marketing – The Ultimate Internet Image!

There is a transition occurring today in the marketplace from an outbound, old media marketing strategy to an inbound, new media approach presents an interesting, challenging, and even profitable environment for business owners willing to incorporate and even embrace current transition. The shift from old to new, outbound, even intrusive marketing to an inbound, customer/client driven methodology appears to be profound and lasting. The current economic trend is challenging, and that’s putting it mildly. Yet even the most experienced entrepreneurs and Internet marketing specialists are grappling with the right strategy, the right combination of tools, necessary to survive this downturn. In order to survive, businesses must adapt, rethink, and redesign their current approach to advertising and marketing. As a result of our current economic challenges, businesses are finding it increasingly important, imperative, to develop and strengthen relationships, not only with prospective customers, but with their established customer base as well. Engaging in a relationship building strategy with customers they have already done business with at some point in the past is one of the most effective methods for improving a business’s overall profitability, while decreasing advertising costs. It is the established customer/client base, combined with a successful relationship building campaign that includes a number of tools and marketing platforms, that will ultimately lead to not only survival in the current economy but prosperity…in spite of it!

The Emergence of the Weblog!

The emergence of the weblog (web log) or blog, blogging in today’s parlance, revolutionized the way individuals communicate on the Internet. Significantly, what was once considered to be solely a social communication vehicle, almost a means to “gossip” on the web, quickly became the darling of the Internet for individuals and businesses alike. Today, everyone from the neighborhood grandmother talking about her most recent trip back east to see the grandchildren, to The Ford Motor Company and Skittles are blogging and the reasons are myriad. Blogging allows a connection between participants unlike anything I have witnessed in marketing to date.

Marketing History: A Flashback to Bobby and Billy!

In my 54 years I have weathered several recessions, a number of presidents, including a resignation and an assassination, and a couple of attempted ones, the Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King marketing masterpiece, the “New Coke” marketing debacle, the ultimate political spin of the Clinton Presidency, and the annual marketing bonanza also known as the Super Bowl. However, I have never witnessed anything like the emergence of the “blogosphere.”

The Blogosphere? What the Heck is the Blogosphere?

The blogosphere? Well, if we use Technorati’s definition “The blogosphere is the collective community of all blogs.” How many? As of Technorati’s August 2008 report on the state of the blogosphere there were 133 million blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002, with 1.5 million per week being added per week since then. Surely Technorati’s numbers have changed vastly in the last year but the fact is no one really knows how many blogs exist. There is however one undeniable fact, the blog is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

The Demographics of Blogging

The face of the average blogger is a difficult one to perceive. The numbers grow and the demographics shift but the average blogger is male, over 25 years old, 50% of all bloggers are over 35 years of age, married, college educated, with an average yearly income of over $50,000, and 48% live in North America. Four out of every five people blogging, known as bloggers, identify themselves as personal bloggers. Interestingly, there is a great amount of overlap between bloggers, professional, corporate, and personal, with many designating themselves as two out of the three or all three. Almost half of all bloggers noted that they have had or continue to have multiple blogs, 60% of all bloggers having two or more years of blogging experience, with the average tenure being three years. Female bloggers make up 34% of active bloggers, males make up 73% of all bloggers in Asia, and the youngest blogging population seems to be in Europe, with half of all respondents being between the age of 18 and 34 years of age.

The Emergence of Social Media

With the emergence of social media, and the realization of the power social media marketing offers, including the mini-blog phenomena Twitter and facebook, the blog has maintained its pivotal role as the “hub spot” from which an increasing numbers of companies, from the mom and pop corner store to Fortune 100 corporations, are building inbound, Internet marketing campaigns. The blog offers the ideal platform for relationship building. Connecting with prospective clients, as well the current customer/client base in a way no other medium offers, the combination of the blog and various Web 2.0 platforms is both organic and dynamic. Blogging is a crucial component in any “new media,” inbound marketing strategy. Added to the blogging hub, the social media or Web 2.0 campaign offers an innovative and forward thinking approach to prospective customer and established customer relationship building never before offered in this way by a marketing strategy.

What the Heck Happened to the Website?

So, what happened to the website? Well, first of all a blog is a website! Yes, it is a website, and it’s not, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Internet marketing has experienced a transition, a revolution of sorts, from the traditional website to the fresh and organic approach of the blog. The blog should be an integral part of any online marketing strategy. Blogging not only provides useful content for a business’s target audience, it also builds relationships and strengthens the connection between current customers and businesses engaged in this useful marketing strategy. The business blog has virtually, and literally, replaced the conventional website as many company’s primary customer/client communication vehicle, and rightly so. The combination of other media, along with the blog, as in the case of social media marketing mentioned above, offers an inbound marketing strategy, cost-effective and profitable, short and long-term.

Weather the Storm and Prospering in the Current Economy!

The question every business owner today must ask: “How do I develop a marketing strategy that will allow me weather the current economic storm?” The fact is many of the traditional marketing strategies, also referred to as outbound or old media advertising strategies have been replaced by inbound, new media marketing methods, with impressive and lasting results. The cost of new media marketing is substantially less than most traditional, outbound methods engaged in by traditional brick and mortar businesses today (e.g., television, radio, newspaper, etc.). Given the current economic climate, this certainly seems counter-intuitive. During a time when businesses large and small are struggling to stay afloat, it would seem prudent to engage in any strategy that promises to increase traffic while decreasing the cost of doing business. Additionally, the reduction in the cost of doing business associated with an inbound, new media marketing strategy is generally accompanied by an increase in revenue and an improved and strengthened customer/business connection. The benefits of the new media, inbound strategy are derived solely due to the blog as the central component, the linchpin or hub, driving the entire program and making the entire business more profitable and even prosperous, regardless of the current economy…or perhaps because of it.

Why UII?

The transition from traditional, outbound, old media marketing to an innovative, inbound, new media strategy is the focus of The Ultimate Internet Image, a new venture created to serve traditional brick and mortar businesses and Internet marketers alike. The Ultimate Internet Image focuses on an inbound marketing strategy while realizing that there is still power and usefulness in some outbound marketing media platforms. The UII marketing strategy creates a synergy, a synthesis of the old media with the new media in order to create a marketing plan designed specifically for the individual client, not a cookie-cutter, one size fits all approach so commonly seen online.

Where Do I Find UII?

The Ultimate Internet Image has offices in Maine, Florida, New York, Minnesota, Ohio, and Illinois, with more opening every week. We welcome you to explore the ultimate opportunity, as a client or as a director and owner. Contact information is available at The Ultimate Internet Image’s blog, listed below.

We invite you to discover what it means to offer The Ultimate Internet Image!

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

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There is a transition underway, a shift from traditional, offline or “outbound” advertising techniques to a synergy employing the best offline strategies and sophisticated online, Internet marketing platforms to engage the customer and prospective customer as never before. The marketing transition underway will yield increased customer traffic, lasting customer relationships, greater customer loyalty, and greater prosperity in spite of the current economic downturn.

There is a revolution is underway, a shift from traditional offline advertising, also referred to as “outbound advertising,” to online or “Internet” advertising. The transition has gained momentum as its popularity increases, becoming the medium of choice for business owners large and small, from the tiny “mom and pop” corner store to Fortune 100 companies. The reasons for this transition from traditional forms of advertising to new and innovative online strategies are complex and, at first glance, don’t appear to make much sense. However, once a company examines the logic, and even the psychology, behind this shift in focus and tests it, in almost every instance they are convinced of the power and profitability of the Internet, as not only a sales tool but as a client/customer relationship tool, as well. Unlike any strategy available prior to the Internet, the web provides easy and, in many cases, automatic access to customers and prospective customers alike, often at the push of a button.

Outbound Advertising: Prospective Customer and Customer Antipathy

Unlike many online methods of advertising and customer contact, traditional “outbound advertising” seeks out prospective clients by what can only be referred to as an invasive strategy, a strategy often resented by prospect and established customer alike. The company or advertising agency attempts to reach prospective clients through TV advertisements, radio ads, newspaper ads, direct mail, billboards, and so on. Significantly, many of the traditional types of advertising campaigns carry with them a negative connotation or stereotype, they are viewed with disdain and even contempt by the very people the ads are attempting to impress. Prospective clients and even established customers will use the time during television commercials to go to the rest room, get refreshments or do anything else but taken in the message advertisers have spent hundreds, even thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, for them to see. During radio commercials, listeners often change the station searching for music, getting annoyed when they can’t find a station playing music instead of ads. When a homeowner receives the mail delivery, they immediately throw away junk mail, referring to the trash receptacle as “file 13!” Readers of the morning paper will make a conscious effort to read or look “around” newspaper ads, focusing solely on the stories, the “Irish Sports Page,” the obituaries, and of course the funnies or comics.

The Emerging Trend and the Beginning of a Revolution

Enter the website! For years those savvy enough to realize early on that an Internet presence would pay dividends, unlike anything available through traditional, offline, “outbound” advertising, benefited from the greatest new tool available, the website! The website allowed for instant access to a business’s products and services unavailable through traditional advertising methods and vehicles without incredible expense and a cumbersome, if not unreadable, advertisement. The website revolutionized product and service presentation, making it one of the most popular and affordable advertising platforms a business can employ to generate interest in their business and increase traffic to the traditional brick and mortar companies using them as part of an overall advertising strategy. Interestingly, the website evolved into a vehicle in direct competition with traditional businesses as online business took off.

The Emergence of the Search Engine and “Googling”

The emergence of online business, and Internet marketing in general, changed forever the focus and the method of both advertising and the way business is conducted. With the emergence of the website, advertising changed from an “outbound” phenomenon to an “inbound,” client driven methodology. Prospective clients and customers began to look for, and actively search out, businesses and thus, with the emergence of the search engines, at first as simple as the first AOL and Webcrawlers and ultimately to The New King of the Hill, Google, marketing was revolutionized and changed forever. Google and “Googling” changed the way businesses are searched out and presented forever. Now, instead of an invasive form of advertising, “outbound advertising,” the client actively engages in the process of seeking out and finding businesses fitting their specific search criteria, their “keywords.” Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and many others began to use keywords and complex algorithms, mathematical formulas, to establish rankings for companies with websites on the net, and the race was on.

The Death of The King: Long Live The King!

With the emergence of Google and Googling, “The King of the Outbound Advertising Hill,” the “Yellow Pages,” will never again see the glory days of the past. In fact, many a “Yellow Pages” advertising directory may be found, if it can be found at all, on the back porch collecting mold and mildew, in the garage under a pile of debris or in some closet or cabinet taking up space and never to be heard from again, at least until someone from the local school comes around as part of a recycling campaign and takes it off your hands. Thousands of dollars, collecting mold, dust, and not much else, while businesses in the know, those who have already made the transition to the Internet, have reduced or eliminated their expenses in return for a more innovative, relevant advertising strategy, one optimizing the best of the traditional, offline and online tactics to increase traffic, improve the company’s bottom line, and all the time reducing costs.

SEO: What the Heck is SEO?

SEO, search engine optimization, a complex and all-encompassing strategy used to influence and improve a company’s web presence through a number of strategies, soon became the darling of the “new Internet.” SEO also became the most sought after, least understood, and most expensive of all web services. To achieve optimal search engine rankings, companies paid thousands of dollars in an attempt to understand, manipulate, and ultimately conquer their respective “niche,” competitive environment, and target market and audience. Traditional SEO continues to play a role in many business’ overall Internet marketing strategies. However, the time and cost of a fully optimized search engine optimization campaign, complete with website and/or blog enhancements, has made it somewhat less attractive, particularly in light of current economic trends.

A Transition within a Transition

Interestingly, there is a shift underway in Internet marketing, as well. We will touch on this transition within a transition here and in subsequent articles. For many years now, online advertising has been all about the website. In fact, when an Internet consultant interviews a prospective client for the first time, a “website” is the first thing most business owners, advertising vice presidents, company presidents, and even CEOs ask for. However, the once requisite website has been usurped, no longer the King of the Internet Mountain, by the blog. Blogs and blogging represent the fastest segment of the Internet, with Twitter’s mini-blog format and facebook’s family friendly, community atmosphere and approach running alongside; and, both taking the net by storm. The blog is a marketing sensation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it allows for an intimate and ongoing exchange between the advertiser and the client and prospective client alike. The relationship building feature of the blog, organic in nature, results in a connection building process unlike anything available in any other single form of expression today.

The One-Two Punch: Blogging and Social Media

The relationship building capabilities of the blog, coupled with an intelligent overall strategy fully engaging the emerging power of social media, also referred to as Web 2.0, and a thoughtfully designed and properly incentivized email campaign, make it far and away the most promising new advertising vehicle available to businesses today, big and small. Interestingly, even companies like Skittles and Diet Coke are entering the social media milieu in a big way. Diet Coke now has a significant following on Twitter, yet nothing compared to the followings of President Barack Obama, CNN, Time Magazine, and The New York Times. Significantly, The New York Times, CNN, and Time Magazine have a multitude of blogs, all focused on various topics of interest to their readers, their target audience. The visual and print media companies have demonstrated the power, and indeed the necessity, of communicating directly with various segments of their audience through blogging, targeting them based on interest, and developing a loyal following as a result.

The Skittles Revolution

Skittles leads the revolution! Skittles has a small but active following on Twitter but it is their move to YouTube that is really opening eyes. Linked to their Twitter account, Skittles has moved to establish a profound and significant social media presence. The staggering fan base on facebook is actually the most interesting aspect of this story. With nearly 3,000,000 fans on facebook alone, there can be little doubt of social media’s power to create and maintain customer loyalty. Skittles has gone so far as to integrate a “squeeze” or “capture” page leading to their various Internet marketing platforms. While there are other companies fully engaged in an Internet marketing combination strategy, such as that engaged in by Skittles, the candy merchandiser has demonstrated an online marketing sophistication leaving many of the company’s competitors in the online dust. The use of mini-blogging, both on facebook and Twitter, along with video marketing, and the use of a “capture page” to collect data they are interested in, indicates and overall Internet marketing strategy capable of moving Skittles ahead of its competition. Interestingly, Ford Motor has engaged a social media manager, Scott Monty, who maintains, among other Web 2.0 platforms, a growing Twitter following just shy of 6500 and a loyal fan base on facebook, as well.

Old or New? Struggle or Prosperity?

There can be little doubt as to the magnitude of the transition underway in advertising and marketing today. Significantly, there is a transition within a transition taking place; and, blogging and social media are emerging as a powerful one-two punch designed to build customer loyalty and shape buying behaviour as never before. The powerful relationship building tools available to companies engaged in online marketing offer a promise never before possible through traditional marketing strategies and “outbound” advertising media. Those businesses unable or unwilling to keep pace and go with the current trend will be left outside looking in as marketing strategies continue to evolve and improve. The “blogosphere,” particularly as it relates to a business’s target market or audience, social media or Web 2.0, the use of sophisticated relationship building strategies, such as email autoresponder campaigns, and various search engine optimization techniques (SEO), will provide businesses engaged in the Internet marketing revolution an opportunity to grow and prosper, in spite of the current economic down turn. For the rest? It will be a long, hot summer!

Look for our next article: The Ultimate Website and the Blog: Blogosphere, Web 2.0, and the Autoresponder – The Ultimate Internet Marketing Revolution Continues!

Let Our Family Serve Your Family!

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
CEO and Founder
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

See also and more to follow:
Our Illinois Internet Image Director and Partner: All Garretson

Our Florida Internet Image Directors and Partners: Brandie Rose Bushwitz and Harry Bushwitz

Our Maine Internet Image Director and Partner: Lisa Sawyer

Our Minnesota Internet Image Director and Partner: Stephen Jankowski

Our New York Internet Image Director and Partner: Ross Diamond

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