Using social media

Yesterday, I was talking to Kerri and Melissa about the need for continuously marketing their web site (http://swain.ces.ncsu.edu/) and in particular the new "Ask an Expert" feature on it. I told her, "if you are only going to rely on people stumbling across it, then you will only get a handful of hits". You have to tell people about it. And not just once, but continuously. Everyone know about Coke, but they still spend a ton of money in advertising every year. How can you do this? One way is to use the traditional methods that you are already using such as talking about it, mentioning it in your newsletters and other print media and if you have any radio air time, mention it there. But, that is only going to reach the people that already know about you and at a time when they are not at the computer, so they can't do anything with that information at that time.

The solution is to develop and use social media. Get other people to talk about you! Put your information out there for everyone to see!

Kelly Shibari of Hourglass8 Media conducted a great experiment to show the power of social media and wrote about it at: The Social Media ROI Experiment. A great quote from this article (and I recommend reading the whole article) is:

"I have to then try to explain to them that social media marketing is not a dollars-in, dollars-out equation. It’s not that simple. Social media is about visibility. It’s about how many people find you interesting enough to check out. It’s about how many people think you’re interesting enough to talk to you, visit your site, and contemplate purchasing whatever is there."

Are you using social media to market your product or yourself? HOW??? Share your methods by commenting on this post.

Are you making people think you are interesting enough or useful enough to talk to you?

Another recent article on Social Media ROI worth reading is at: HowTo: Measure Social Media ROI.

I found out about Kelly from Chris Brogan's newsletter where I also get a lot of other thought provoking reading. My favorite quotes from this weeks' newsletter is, "Your only competition is you. When you look to succeed, measure against yourself. It's okay to take a quick peek at someone else to get a gauge of where you stand in comparison, but then throw that information aside and measure where you are NOW and where you want to be..." and "No one ever wins a race looking sideways."