Why Social Media?

Word-0f-Mouth is now Word of Mouse!

Social Networking has always existed in some form or fashion- people gathering together to share experiences and get and give advice to reduce risk in making decisions.

Today’s consumers do this through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and are now able to communicate real time on the internet to a much broader audience. Overwhelmed with telemarketing, direct mail, and e-mail, more and more consumers are turning to Social Media (comments, blogs, podcasts, photo and video sharing). And since these consumers are actually looking for information, more and more businesses are finding Social Media to be an incredibly efficient and cost-effective way to engage with their customers.

Social media marketing campaigns provide businesses with new ways of online marketing that no longer rely primarily on traditional online advertising with large budgets, such as banner ad campaigns and paid search advertising, to build brand-awareness and drive web site traffic. The main benefits of a social media marketing campaign are:

· Increased Brand Awareness

A social media marketing campaign creates brand visibility and builds brand-awareness from viral messages that travel throughout the social web. Whether from content that virally travels or from active participation in the target communities, these campaigns help to establish a brand’s power of authority and online reputation.

· More Web Site Traffic and Links

Social media marketing campaigns generate links and web site traffic from profile pages at social media web sites, web widgets, social network applications and content that travels virally throughout social media news and bookmarking web sites. More links result in higher rankings of web pages in the organic search results at Google, Yahoo, Bing and others.

· Improved Customer Relationships

Social media marketing – through social networking profiles, blogs, podcasts, wiki’s, forums and other social media tools – improve customer relationships and customer engagement. They develop a deeper, two-way communications channel with the customer, so that your business can take part in the discussions, receive feedback and build trust.