Inbound Marketing Blog

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is now an important factor in SEO. Will it be more important than SEO, will Facebook take over Google as the king of searches? 

If you're a busy business person who is interested in learning how social media can help your business but you're overwhelmed by the whole social media thing. Where to start and what to do... then this article is for YOU!

Are you one of the 1,463,130 people who have viewed the Social Media Revolution video by Erik Qualman on YouTube? If not, there's a link to it at the bottom of this article.  I encourage you to watch it, its only 4mins. The stats of social media usage in this video are amazing!

When I asked this at a recent business networking function no hands went up. 

Two days before the event I learnt Social Media FTW ‘09 was sold out, completely full with 225 delegates and a waiting list. Wow! I was impressed I had no idea so many people in Maine were so hungry to learn about social media. I was pleased I had decided to go, I was curious to meet all these people who also have in interest in Social Media.

Today, the technology introducing the new era of marketing is the internet and more specifically social media marketing. The internet has created a platform which has changed distribution, advertising, consumer needs and buyer behavior, introducing a new psychology and approach to marketing. In order to run a successful business, understanding how this technology is influencing and changing your market is paramount to guaranteeing marketing victory. It's the marketers and business owners that harness this change in marketing and the psychology who will be the ones that build sustainable businesses and not only survive these tough economic times but position themselves to prosper in the future.

There are lot of articles and blogs online about how to get started with Twitter so I'm going to skip over the ‘how to' side of Twitter and focus more on sharing my experience with Twitter as a business owner and marketer.

I recently discovered the Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael A Stelzer. 880 business owners, employees and sole proprietors were surveyed in an attempt to uncover the who, what, where, when and why of Social Media Marketing. There are a lot of interesting findings in this report, however, I've pulled out just a few results that I believe would be the most valuable to SMBs. If you're interested in reading the entire report you can download it for FREE at: Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

The business results you have today are based on what you did in the past. Consequently, what you do today to market your business, will impact your business tomorrow. So the question is... 

As a small business owner I get excited about the opportunity Social Media provides as marketing tool to better understand my audience.  I am surprised when I talk to other business owners who are reluctant to learn more about the benefits of social media for their business. One stand out benefit is the low to no cost of social media, giving small business the chance to compete on a level playing field with larger companies with deeper pockets.  My goal in writing this blog is to help small business owners understand the benefit social media can bring to their business and how to get value out of your online communities.