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Jumping into Social Media Marketing? Look for the Influencers
By admin | July 28, 2010
Social influence is a key factor when it comes to marketing. It doesn’t matter if you are using traditional channels or not. Influence is what drives a person to choose one car manufacturer or fast food restaurant over another. Social Media Marketing which targets online influence is the wave of now.
With that in mind, inbound marketing has become the way to attract leads and customers throughout the Internet world and beyond. Whereas in the not too distant past a company could place an advertisement in a few magazines and run a TV commercial to build leads and make sales, these avenues are being tuned out by former customers who are looking elsewhere for their entertainment, news and information. But even with marketers turning to social media for inbound marketing they have hit upon a couple of hurdles.
First, social media marketing takes time. There truly isn’t one specific avenue to take to get great, immediate results. Social media is more about building relationships than any other form of marketing short of taking your wares door-to-door. Which, in essence, what is really happening. Companies are finding that they need to start pressing the virtual flesh. One person at a time.
The other hurdle is measuring results. Right now, it isn’t easy to do. These kinds of metrics are relatively new. With traditional ads response can be measured by clicks, promo codes and other tracking features. Social media, who knows? If you start passing out promo codes on Twitter you may end up turning off more prospects than you gain and you’ll "out" the marketer you have in place.
But social media isn’t going anywhere and it’s an avenue that should be used to build brand and community.
That brings me to the point of this post. To reduce the time it takes to begin influencing people and building community and buzz, your best bet is to influence the influencers. You know, the Ashton Kutchers, Seth Godins, and Chris Brogans of the world. The social influencers you want to reach are the top members in the industry or topic that your prospects are most likely to be listening to or reading about on the social influencer’s Twitter pages, blogs and web sites. By targeting the top social influencers and getting in their good graces you cut down on the amount of door-to-door flesh pressing you’ll have to do to get your social media marketing campaign underway.
Question is, how do you know who the influencers are if you don’t know them by name? Stay tuned…
Topics: Advertising, Blogging, Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »
November 26th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
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