Normally I focus my attention on this blog to TV and how local Kansas City area companies can use television to invite more people to visit their store, use their services, try a new product, etc. When talking to my clients I often discuss their website and what they are doing to drive traffic to that site, or in general how the site helps them get more business.
At the end of the day, all marketing and advertising is about telling your story. Why should people buy from you? What makes your business unique? Why should I buy something from you now? The reason I want to take a moment to talk about social media is because during my experience in advertising sales I have noticed a shift in the sales cycle. When I started my career in radio, we primarily used location and phone numbers as the way for the audience to take the next step in the sales process. Visit a showroom. Call to schedule an appointment. You wanted a good phone number that was easy to remember and repeat it several times in a commercial. That’s old school. Now, it’s all about a your url. Once someone sees your commercial and realizes that their life isn’t complete without your product or service they’ll go online to find out how to take the next step. Is your website easy to remember? If not, can someone easily find you with a search engine? Maybe you’re buying keywords, maybe not depending on how competitive your industry is. Companies will continue to use television to get people to want to buy something, or to continue to establish their brand. Today there is an extra step in the sales cycle that happens online. It’s critical to have a website that is easy to find and simple to navigate.
What do people mean by social media? Why is it important to me, a local business in Kansas City? Why should I invest time, energy, and possibly money into it?
I’m so glad you asked! 
My definition of social media is an online way to communicate or network with your customers, colleagues and potential clients in order to build a support system or community on the Internet. The basic tools available to build this relationship electronically consists of your own website, a blog, e-mail newsletters, a Twitter account, and MySpace and/or Facebook pages. There are other tools people use like FriendFeed, url shorteners for Twitter like bit.ly or Tinyurl, but to keep it simple let’s focus on having a blog tied to your website, a fan page on Facebook and/or MySpace, and a Twitter account.
Blogging
A blog is important because it is an easy way for you to be an expert and be able to post helpful information that your customers may be looking for. Is it time consuming? A little. You need to continue to keep some fresh content available so that your readers will keep coming back. But is it worth it? You bet! One of the best reasons to have a blog is so that search engines will find you easier. You can use keywords that are important to your industry in the blog and then when someone Googles those keywords, your blog will show up in the results! The more specific to your industry you write about, the better! Also, the more links you have from other websites to your site, the higher you will rank in search results. Go to other blogs that relate to your industry and leave comments. This will immediately give you free links back to your site or blog and make the search engines take notice. You might also gain more readers to your own blog in the process! If your content is valuable people will leave comments and now an online conversation has been started. Don’t forget, you’re the expert on whatever it is you do. Don’t be afraid to write about it. You can get free software loaded into your own website like Word Press or you can create a free blog at http://www.blogger.com/ to get started.
Twitter
So you’ve started this online conversation with your blog. Other than search engines, how are people going to know to read your blog? Twitter is a social media community where people are able to post messages called “tweets” that may not exceed 140 characters. You can include weblinks in your tweet, or attach pictures. Start finding people who talk about things that are related to your industry. I’ll use myself as an example. I started following people who write about advertising. I follow Tom Martin and Phil Johnson who write for Ad Age. I follow local advertising agencies in Kansas City or people who work at local agencies. I also follow people who write about blogging or social media like Chris Brogan. If you know me very well, you also know that I’m into technology like iPhones and computer software, so I follow Chris Pirillo who talks about all things Geeky. I follow most of these people on Twitter and I read many of their blogs because they write about things I’m into. This is the online community I’m talking about. When they post something on their blogs, they broadcast it in a tweet on Twitter and all of their followers or “friends” know to go take a look. People also just kind of chat back and forth about different topics that relate to their industries. Sometimes people write about silly things like the weather, their pets, what they’re going to do on the weekend, or their favorite restaurants, but isn’t that what we do in real life with our business relationships? I often talk about my family with clients, or activities I do with friends. That’s how we build relationships with one another. That’s how we build credibility with our clients as well because they get to know us! The real us.
Twitter also gets me back to the whole search engine optimization thing or SEO as people refer to it. Again, the more links from external sites you have back to your site, the better. Twitter is also being used as a customer service tool. If you want to know what people are saying about you, Twitter is searchable! You can set up a search for keywords, or your business name and whenever anyone tweets about you, you can read it. It feels a little like spying in a high tech kind of way! Why wouldn’t you want to know? I booked a reservation last night for a Hyatt hotel near Chicago. I’m going to be in a friend’s wedding and they have a block of rooms reserved there. If I need anything from Hyatt regarding my stay, guess what? I can tweet about it. Hyatt has an online concierge on Twitter! I bet you that they are searching Twitter for anything related to the Hyatt brand, so if I tweet that I’m unhappy about the quality of my room, don’t like the food, or just wanted to brag about how awesome my hotel is, they’ll see it and be able to respond directly to me accordingly. It’s amazing and it’s the future of customer service! Since I tweet from my iPhone, I’ll be able to have a conversation with them via Twitter while I’m staying at their hotel in Chicago.
Are you starting to get it? Have I recommended anything that costs much money yet? Well, not if you do it mostly yourself. There are agencies that specialize in social media and if you want to pay people to set this up and manage it for you, they can. BUT, wouldn’t you want to be engaged with your customers using these great tools? Of course you would!
E-mail Newsletters
Many of you are already using e-mail newsletters to promote your business or services. Great job! Keep it up. Once you have a blog, you pretty much have most of the content that you’d need for your newsletter. Maybe you could put a little more insider information in it though. You should be using your e-letter to offer highly sought information, or the newest product launches to your subscribers before the general public hears about it, or for special discounts available only to those that read your message. Make your newsletter something people look forward to getting, not just more junk to delete from their inbox. Chris Brogan does a great job of making his e-mail newsletters more personal and a deeper look inside what he’s doing to build his army of social media colleagues. The content in his e-mails is different than his blogs, so I look forward to reading it. I subscribe to all kinds of e-letters and I actually read most of them. I begin deleting them when they start looking and sounding like spam. I’m talking about you Harrah’s, Caesar’s Palace, and yes, even you Venetian!
Social Networking
Finally, MySpace and Facebook are not just dating sites! I see more music industry people still using MySpace becuase people can listen to their products there. Facebook seems to be dominating with overall members and businesses by recent trends. The other day I became a fan of The Grass Pad. It’s a local outdoor lawn and garden company… “The Grass Pad’s High On Grass”! Why would I be a fan? Because now I get alerts when they’re having a sale, or when I should be buying a certain type of fertilizer for my lawn. They have information that I want. Are you catching on? I’m into have a good looking lawn and they’re experts on teaching me how to do this. I’m a loyal customer, a fan. I don’t buy cheap grass seed or lawn chemicals at Home Depot because they are not my local expert, The Grass Pad is.
That’s how you do it! (There’s so much more, but these are the fundamentals.) Social networking isn’t just for bloggers and it’s not just for big national companies. Quite the opposite actually. It’s for niches. It’s for extending your local community and brand online. Success doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve been blogging and tweeting for less than a year. I rarely have comments on my blog, (and rarely any readers! ) but if you Google my name, I’m starting to show up. Quite amazing given that my name is very common and Raymartin.com/net is a company that specializes in near nude pictures of female body builders. (How could I make that up! This is why I chose MyAdGuy.com. It was easy to remember, available, and said something about what I do.) That being said, people are starting to have an interest in what I say on my blog, or tweet on Twitter. And why shouldn’t they? I’m an advertising expert. So, what are you waiting for? Come join the online conversation!
I welcome your questions and comments! After reading this, you should know how to find me!
