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Internet Marketing Strategy Social Media Marketing Part 4

05/01/2008

Over the last couple of years, businesses while evaluating their Internet Marketing Strategy, seem to have come to grips that consumer generate media, blogs, networking sites and other forms of social media are impacting their brands—and have the potential to trash it. Think Dell Hell. Know well that it is not a passing fad. The millions and millions of users, both young and old, want to be part and contribute to the online conversation. This is an important factor to keep in mind when preparing your social media strategy all leading to a broad word of mouth campaign fueled by your customers.

As traditional media continues its decline, readers are turning to the Internet for their news and almost everything thing else from online dating to removing warts. This is a huge opportunity for organizations to get their messages out directly to your consumers and prospects. With traditional media, one must convince a journalist and/or editor of the merits of your message—then they might write their own story taking into account the publication’s editorial policy (think bias).

Fast forward to the Internet today—you can write a press release, issue it using an Internet press release (wire) service and have it in front of your audience within hours. No editor to convince—the gatekeepers are gone. The press releases must be written as news stories as there is no editor to rewrite it for you.

Content generation is a key part of your social media strategy. Use what you found in listen step:

• What’s positive?
• What’s negative?
• Who is your audience?
• What are they interested in?
• What content can you deliver that adds value and addresses their needs and interests?

Once you have compiled all this information you would then prepare your strategy. The parts would include:

• Summary of the research from the listen step
• Delineation of the organization’s goals

Here are some examples of steps that could be included in a social media strategy for a consumer product:

1. Design and build a blog(s) using the CEO (or other interested executive) and/or someone else in the company who is a good writer but more importantly very passionate about the company and its products. Get the bloggers (writers) trained on how to post (write blog content) and get them grooved in on the conventions of the blogosphere.

2. Locate community sites, forums, online user groups, social news sites, and blogs that would be of interest to the current and planned product campaigns.

3. Make a concerted effort to establish relationships with social media power users (the new influencers) and other online communities that can be leveraged for a specific social media push.

4. And so on.

Your strategy is a long-term plan of action that once completed will achieve one more goals. The game of course is to win—such as get higher sales, a bigger share of market and expanded brand awareness. Once the plan has been completed, programs can be prepared to execute the tactical targets.
Win with your Internet Marketing Strategy—spend some time researching and preparing a big-think social media strategy.

About the Author:

 

 

 

 

Doug Hay is the co-founder and CEO of Expansion Plus Inc, a leading Los Angeles-based Internet marketing and public relations firm. E+ was an early adopter of these new technologies while leveraging the principals’ multi decades of experience in marketing, public relations, sales and business development. For more information about Doug Hay and Expansion Plus, please visit Expansion Plus.

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