Social Media–talking up your marketing mix!

“ What’s this all about, does it really work, and how will it make me money?”, are the questions you tend to hear when Social Media is mentioned!

Businesses have set key goals to attract online customers to their web sites. Top of the list is to drive increasing word search visitor traffic by climbing up the Google page ranking. Most businesses understand that search engine optimisation works by means of analysing the history of actual words visitors have used when looking for particular goods and services that you offer.

Pay Per Click campaigns and email marketing are all strategies designed to not only attract attention and position your brand but also to create a relationship with a prospective customer. They are popular because performance is easily monitored and statistics driven.

Social Media is all about starting instant and informal two way conversations in real time. It aims to reduce the distance between you and your audience by opening up multiple ‘destination messaging and listening channels’. It is has become a potent visible messaging and ‘soft’ advertising medium to generate traffic from different social network mediums, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.

Twitter is a phenomenal success, ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide. It is the third most used social network, drawing a total number of 45 million monthly visits, of which 6 million are unique !

In 2009 alone, Twitter has seen the biggest growth of unique visitors year on year, up by 1,926%. Contrary to commonly held perception, the largest share of their audience is 35-49 year olds at 33% whilst 77% of audience are 25-64 year olds!

In fact throughout 2009, business has turned to Twitter in a big way. It is recognising the added value of incorporating Twitter into their online marketing mix along with other recognised traffic driving tools.

Daily Twitter feeds, regular strategically published SEO articles and frequent blogging all aim to keep your brand visible through an online presence which is constantly active with relevant exciting, fresh content.