Social Networking

Oct 23 2009

-Julianna Karr

It is an indisputable fact that there is success in advertising. With the right ad campaign, your start- up business has the potential to become a Fortune 500 company; you can even lure the most brand loyal consumer away from his favorite brand. However, your business's current budget may not be flexible enough to roll out an ideal ad campaign. Given the importance of advertising, the one question you should be asking yourself is, "How can we deliver our message to our consumers faster, better and more affordable?"

The answer is simple: through social media. More than likely, if you haven't dabbled with one already you have at least heard or read about social media. According to Wikipedia, there are close to 250 major social networking sites worldwide. What is even more impressive, it is very common to find people who are members of more than one site. While the reasons for becoming a member of any networking site vary from person to person, the reasons why businesses should join the bandwagon are undeniable. To name a few, they allow you to connect realtime with consumers, as well as, with people from your local community. They also provide you with the opportunity to promote brand awareness, and the best part, it's free.

Facebook, for starters – one of our personal favorites at Kelsey - is a network-based website organized by city, workplace, school, and region. According to their statistics, Facebook currently has more than 300 million active users. Of those users, more than 10 million become “fans” of “pages” each day. Just imagine how much exposure your business could receive if you had a page on Facebook. They are simple to set-up and do not have to be time consuming. Your greatest challenge, as is often the case with advertising, will be making sure you communicate the right message to consumers given the medium. You want your page to be inviting but it is equally important that you keep your message relevant, thereby promoting brand awareness.

There are many ways you can setup your Facebook page. You could take a proactive approach and use your page to promote your latest sales, offer coupons, even provide rules on how to enter contests. Or you could use your page as an information guide for your business, as we do here at Kelsey. For example, you can include your business hours, address and location, your essence statement, which “groups” you are affiliated with, etc. We have also found it beneficial to keep our page updated with photos and videos. We believe this gives our page more of a personal feel. However, your creativity does not have to be limited. Considering that Facebook is full of bells and whistles you are almost guaranteed to find a great way to showcase your business.

Another Kelsey favorite is Twitter. It too is an incredibly popular social networking service. Like Facebook, Twitter has the ability to reach a wide variety of diverse users. Twitter, however, is more commonly recognized for their micro-blogging service. In 140 characters or less you can send any message or “tweet” to all of your peers or “followers” real-time. If you want to share an interesting website, article or book, Twitter is the perfect place. By doing so, your “followers” stay interested and are just one click away from your website at all times. Another way to keep your followers active is by posting questions or surveys. Simple business reminders are also effective tweets. They can be as often as you would like and if you do not want to be bothered with the daunting task of logging on everyday to post new information, you do not have to be. There are RSS features in place to automate your posts for you.

While each social networking site offers something a little different, they are each great advertising tools in their own right. To say the least, they are among the latest innovations attributing to the success of advertising and they allow you the opportunity to connect with consumers like never before. Simply put, social networking is cutting edge advertising, efficient and extremely affordable. With it being such an integral part of how people choose to connect with one another instinctively, if your business can use social networking to its advantage, why wouldn't you?