Guest post by Eric Brown
Social Media and all the new online New Media create an array of innovative ways to market your goods and services, particularly for the savvy Guerrilla Marketer. Does that mean you drop traditional marketing? Likely not. I am sometimes criticized for taking an all or nothing kind of approach toward Social Media Marketing as opposed to Traditional Marketing.
No Print is Not Dead! But, it is (as is other traditional media) slipping from our grasp as small business owners quickly, Why? Cost. It is an expensive means to reach your customer and has a pretty short life-cycle, unlike content on the Internet. You may have heard that “what happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” but what happens on the Internet stays on Google, forever.
Perhaps what is most significant about Social Media Marketing is that it can be leveraged. You can even up the score, meaning your Small Business can have as much reach as your much larger competitors using simple and free new media tools.
Blogging Creates Website Traffic
Social Media Marketing tactics and strategies are classic Guerrilla Marketing. Most of it is low cost with a low barrier to entry, which is why Social Media Marketing is so attractive. Perhaps one of the most effective Guerrilla Marketing tactics is blogging. According to a recent survey by HubSpot, who is an excellent resource for lots of different things regarding Internet Marketing, just completed a recent survey that’s worth taking a look at, titled Study Shows Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors.
The data was crystal clear, blogging yields better marketing results. The average company (business) blog has:
- 55% more visitors
- 97% more inbound links
- 434% more indexed pages
What to Do About Social Media
In my own blog, The Urbane Life. Our Urbane Life Blog wanders through and around life in Royal Oak, southeastern Michigan’s hotspot for new urban living. You might find blatherings about the coolest new organizational tool found at IKEA, info on the latest trends in small space decorating, the hottest new artist, restaurant, or boutique in the area. Point being, as with any type of content it must be engaging to the reader and audience, and it is not about our core business.
And consider these points:
- By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers — 96% of them have joined a social network.
- 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences!
- YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
- 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.
- 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
- Only 14% trust advertisements.
My own blog, The Urbane Life, wanders through and around life in Royal Oak, southeastern Michigan’s hotspot for new urban living. You might find blathering about the coolest new organizational tool found at IKEA, info on the latest trends in small space decorating, the hottest new artist, restaurant, or boutique in the area. The point is, social media content it must be engaging to the reader and audience, and does not necessarily be about your core business. But your content must be interesting and related to what you do.
Know that for your blog to be as successful as it can be, it isn’t really about Your Business, and the audience is MUCH larger than the your current customer base. Meaning, most of the audience may not be customers today, but maybe tomorrow, or maybe they know someone looking for your goods and services. Use the new media tools for this purpose and you’ll be getting social media right.
Eric Brown is a founding partner of Urbane Apartments in Royal Oak, Michigan.
He frequently contributes a guest article on guerrilla marketing ideas to The Marketing Spot blog.
Urbane Apartments website
Eric Brown on LinkedIn