Ecommerce Experiment

Last week I had the opportunity to sit through a seminar titled “Building a brand with Social Media”.

This seminar intended to educate those unfamiliar with social media websites and in particular how they can be used as a marketing tool to build a brand for your business or product. The internet has allowed everyone their own voice and this seminar explained the platforms available such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and blogging to get this voice heard.

The keys to success are simple; talk, engage and communicate, be human and be honest. Do something different and be remembered for the right reasons. Even if you are remembered for something other than your product at first, people will associate this with your company and improve brand awareness.  Also, don’t think about the competition, you cannot control what they’re doing so concentrate on what you are doing.

A point that was echoed throughout the seminar was how this cannot be done overnight. Developing relationships and building a community around your brand takes time but if done properly will show results. You must treat this community you have built with respect and if you make an error resolve it and make people love you by doing something positive and different.

The Internet is the only tool that allows you to see what many others are thinking about you and your brand instantly without any extensive market research. You can identify people who love what you do and those who hate it and gather feedback about what you can do differently.

During the seminar, the speaker explained how Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and blogs can be used effectively in business;

Using the tool search.twitter.net on Twitter you can find those searching for your, or similar, products or services and utilize this by engaging with those people. The speaker gave personal examples from his own experiences, for example , after tweeting about his hay fever he received  a message and link from Lloyds pharmacy leading him to hay fever tablets. This can be done with any business, all you need to do is search for those tweeting about your product or service and engage with these people. This is also a great tool to find instant information from your customers about your brand and the products/services you sell and if necessary, turn your haters into fans.

Once you have a community of followers you can tell them about new products and tweet out offers.  If you engage with those with influence in your field you will become even more respected especially if they retweet your tweets to their followers.

Facebook offers paid advertising that is highly targeted meaning you can advertise to those who have mentioned they like or need a product or service that you’re offering. Not only this, you can create groups and fan pages for your business and build a community similar to twitter updating those interested in you with products and offers.

Flickr is a photo sharing application where you can upload photos and join different groups. This is another opportunity to add links to your website.

If you can write a blog with good content, you will gain interest and raise the profile of your business. Again, this is something that takes time and you have to gain respect in your field with interesting content that will bring regular readers.

Also, SEO should always be part of your online marketing campaign and you should hire a consultant to do this for you but use the right company.

The seminar looked at online marketing versus print marketing stating that although dependent on the industry, online marketing was much more efficient. This is because word of mouth is the best type of marketing and due to the instantaneous reaction of the internet, it cannot be beaten by offline print marketing. Online you can reach a global audience in little time, social media is massively viral and with the millions of users, it is easier for something to spread, for example, the T-mobile dance in the train station and Samsungs LED sheep.

The seminar was interactive showing live examples of the ways in which social media can be used. The speaker posted a prepped post to his own personal blog and demonstrated how, using bit.ly, you can shorten the URL for your post then use the twitter feed service to send the RSS feed of your blog to twitter. The link to your post will then be seen by your followers and if any of them decide to retweet your link it will also be seen by their followers.

The speaker suggested it was a good idea to employ a social strategist who will market your business online using social media for those who feel they are unable to do it effectively.