Marketing Agency Maryland

If you’ve been dragging your feet about incorporating conversational marketing through social media channels into your marketing strategies, 2009 is the perfect time to stop procrastinating and take action. Why? Because embarking on such a course of action is economical (your biggest investment is time), and the benefits to your business are significant.

Join an Impressive Community
In July 2008, the Society for New Communications Research released some remarkable findings from its “Social Media in the Inc. 500” study on the usage of social media by corporations. The study documents the Inc. 500’s growth in familiarity with and the adoption and importance-to-mission of social media from 2007 to 2008. Does a nearly-doubling social-media usage rate by Inc. 500 companies convince you to give social media marketing a try?

• 77% of Inc. 500 companies report using at least one type of social media tool (blogs, podcasts, online video, social networks or wikis)
• Almost 1 in 2 companies rate social media as “very important” to their business marketing strategy
• Fortune 500 companies lag behind Inc. 500 companies in social media adoption (e.g., 11.6% of Fortune 500 vs. 39% of Inc. 500 companies blog). Opportunity to differentiate your business?

Stop …
… putting it off. Commit to begin learning how to put conversational marketing to work for you today. Get acquainted with some of the most popular social media channels to see how they enable conversation and engagement:

• Blogs (Wordpress, TypePad, Blogger)
• Microblogs (Twitter, Jaiku)
• Social Networks (LinkedIn, Facebook)
• Aggregation (FriendFeed)
• Collaboration (Wikipedia, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg)
• Multimedia (Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare)
• Entertainment (Second Life, World of Warcraft)

Look …
… long and hard at the social media channels that your customers and potential customers frequent. How do you find those communities? Put the power of search to work for you. You can Google the audiences you’d like to target, the types of products and services you offer and the keywords associated with what you do to find communities that are interested in your specific industry.

For example, suppose your company offers (as does Affordable Creative Services) graphic design services to small and medium businesses in Marlyand (i.e., you’re one of several Maryland graphic designers). On the one hand, if you Google maryland graphic designers, you’ll mostly find competing companies and freelance designers (which may provide good information for you in and of itself), but you may not find your target audience. On the other hand, if you Google small business communities, you’ll find pages of links to forums, blogs and other sites that your existing and potential customers might frequent. You can use a similar search tactic on the various social media platforms.

Listen …
… to what the community members are talking about. Observe the types of conversations that are going on between existing members. When you feel comfortable, enter the conversation by providing valuable information (e.g. commentary and links to other valuable information, unique content, thought-provoking opinion, pertinent examples, supporting research) to the community.

Remember, conversational marketing through social media is all about sharing information and creating value: Focus on no-strings-attached giving, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the valuable benefits you receive in return.