To blog or not to blog - a case for social media marketing

Marketing managers are trying to find the business rationale for putting resources into social media marketing. Most companies that are wrestling with the Internet in general, and social media marketing in particular, are still stuck in the old marketing paradigm consisting of interruption marketing where they throw cash at adverts that have massive scope but only has real relevance to a tiny percentage of their actual target market.

More and more consumers are rebelling against interruption marketing and, with the innumerable tools available today, can screen them out. Today's consumer wants relevant information in a specific format. Knowledgeable companies are embracing the internet and all its components, including the ubiquitous social media. Those that haven't considered social media marketing risk ending up in marketing purgatory - having no visibility and no relevance to their target markets despite budget spent on marketing.

Why use social media?

Internet advertising sales in the UK overtook television advertising for the first time early in 2009, making it the nation's biggest advertising medium, according to new research conducted by the ‘Internet Advertising Bureau' and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Internet advertising sales rose to £1,75 billion (about R19,4 billion) giving it a market share of 23,5%. TV advertising dropped into second place with a 21,9% market share. The UK's advertising market has experienced one of the world's most aggressive expansions, and this is due to the level of the increased usage of Internet based marketing, the main driver of which having been search engines, particularly Google.

The numerous reasons why companies should consider social media include:

• Rapid brand building online;
  
• Generating quality sales leads;
  
• Building a database of qualified prospects and regularly communicating with them to create top-of-mind awareness with decision makers in the target market.

Social media can be very successful but it is not just a matter of having a website presence and hoping that your target audience is going to stumble upon it. Social media has to be planned as part of the total media plan and actively executed. Care has to be taken to use social media as a tool to communicate with the right people who will make buying decisions.

“The trick to being found on the internet is to have relevant keywords that your target market is typing in and to have high rankings on the top search engines, Google in particular. More than 60% of searches are conducted through this search engine. And, if your company isn't on the top 10 of the search engine rankings for your keyword phrase, you're losing out. Studies have revealed that if your website is number one on Google for your particular keyword phrase, you'll get a 27% click through to your site and if you're number two, a mere 12%. Number ten, gets you just over 2% clicks,” says business generator, Jacques de Villiers, a specialist in social media and Internet marketing.

How to get into the ‘Top Ten'

In order to get a top 10 ranking on Google, and ultimately to claim the number one spot, you will need to get other websites to ‘vote' for your company's website. In other words, the more relevant websites your URL is on, and the more popular they are, the more chance your company has of claiming a top ranking. But, it is difficult to get links onto popular websites. It is time consuming and often doesn't yield enough return on investment in relation to the time spent. Social media can solve this problem as links back to your website can be created for free on a daily basis.

The cornerstone of every social media marketing campaign is a blog. A blog can be created and posted everyday with a link back to the website. That's 365 links every year. This will multiply when there are teams of people blogging every day turning that into thousands of links. A free blog can be set up in less than 10 minutes through www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com. Some blogs can be attached to the company website, resulting in every blog posting creating another page. It is now also possible to brand a blog with the company logo and give it a URL of choice.

Another criterion for getting great rankings from Google is the size of the website. The bigger the website, the more weight it has according to Google, its mandate being to present relevant content to its audience. If the website becomes a massive resource of relevant content, it'll move up in the rankings. Google also looks for activity on the website. Therefore, adding at least a page a week to the website will have a substantial effect on where it is listed.

Be consistent

However, it is important to have clear social media policies in place to ensure one consistent message.

Press releases could be posted on the blog using tools to ensure a wide spread of the article across the internet. Some of these tools include Twitter (www.twitter.com), Linkedin (www.linkedin.com) or Facebook business pages (www.facebook.com). Suddenly, one article will result in three links back to the website. In addition, you can film someone talking about the key points of the blog post and get it onto Youtube (www.youtube.com), the second biggest search engine in the world which is owned by the biggest search engine, being Google.

Although finding the right social media vehicle for your company can be overwhelming, the trick is to dip your toe into the water and take on one a month. This way, it is possible to build a lasting social media strategy that will directly reach decision makers in the correct target market. A good social media strategy can see your brand growing innumerably and the generation of many appropriate leads.