Social Media, It Can't be Ingnored by Marketers

Millions of people are gravitating to social networking sites such as MySpace, Blogger and Facebook. At the same time, other medias such as television, print, magazines are starting to lose numbers or their numbers are on the decline. For example the Wall Street Journal mentions that Blogger.com had 142 million visitors during September 2007, while Windows Live Spaces had 119 million, MySpace had 107 million, and Facebook had 73 million. With numbers like these marketeers can not ignore this trend. There is still some big debates about whether these sites will last and will there be a return on the investment for investors and advertisers.

For the advertiser however participating in social media is a good way to build brand awareness and get customers to know and try your product. At this point these markets are strictly for those companies with deep pockets as most small businesses cannot effectively participate. Having a good blog attached to a product however helps you get more personal with your audience and adds credibility to what it is you do.

A recent experiment of mine, had me announce a new meetup on a topic of interest and within a few days I had four people that were interested in coming to my event. I was surprised as to the scope of the network in only a couple of days. Some expensive radio and print campaigns are lucky to draw a response like this in such a short time.

Its only a matter of time before even small businesses will need to how to build and/or participate in a local social networking group. All marketers are going to have to also get fully up to speed knowledge wise on social networks, as it only a matter of time when everyone in business will have to accept these networks and they will have to be taken very seriously.

There are already major networking sites for people over the age of 40 and now Eons a new social networking site for people over 50. Marketers and business everywhere take note, Web 2.0 and social networking are here to stay.

Kensel Tracy is a Business Coach and Senior Partner with the Corporate Coachworkz Inc. in Chelsea, Quebec.

The Beginning of the Personal Brand

Well over the past few months I have been doing a lot of research on social network marketing and I am finding that things are changing quite fast. For example, a couple articles this week showed that traditional media buys are on the decline while web marketing and personal brand marketing are on the increase. Personal brand marketing is using the Internet to promote your products and build your brand. An example is the " Just Start a Business" campaign promoted by http://www.meetups.com/ which promotes getting a group together to just start talking about starting a business. The sponsor, Quicken Get Started, small business accounting software promotes the events, helps to offset the cost of the Meetups site and offers a free starter accounting software to those attending the event. In the past these dollars would have gone into mainstream media advertising.

Another examples is last year, Johnson & Johnson decided to boycott the so-called upfronts, an annual event when advertisers get together with television executives to negotiate for commercial time. In August, General Motors said that 2008 would be the last year for its longtime sponsorship of the Olympics. In May, A. G. Lafley, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, told financial analysts that the company would spend less on traditional media and more on its Web site, in-store advertising and promotional events.

Another example is to take Nike's marketing pitch. Today,many Nike ads are shown only on the Internet. Wayne Rooney, the British soccer player, is currently featured in a series of online videos for Nike. In 2005, Nike placed a 2-minute, 46-second clip of the Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho online, instead of on TV. The video has had more than 17 million views on YouTube and became so well known that some television networks like Sky Sports and the BBC showed it in their news coverage — free. I would like to thank Louise Story for her October 14, 2007 story, The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life. in which she give the details above and a whole lot more interesting reasons why Internet and personal brand marketing will become even bigger in the years to come. I hope to cover this topic more fully in my next up coming blogs. In the meantime think about how you are building your own personal brand. I will give you some tips in the days and weeks to come.

Kensel Tracy is the Marketing Coach and is Senior Partner with the Corporate Coachworkz Inc. located in Chelsea, Quebec, Canada. He is currently writing a new book called: Building Your Personal Brand, Finding Your Way in the Real World. see his website as http://www.corporatecoachworkz.com/ or at kenselt@sympatico.ca

Why Would you Hire a Marketing Coach

Have you ever thought that you would need some additional marketing help and not want to hire an agency? That's a perfect assignment for a marketing coach. A marketing coach can cut the learning curve for you. Its that simple. A good coach can get an better understanding of you and your business and do what it takes to help you run a good campaign, develop a new brochure or web site, establish a sales and marketing plan or come in on a contract basis and run your marketing department in times of need like maternity leave or when you just need someone to run a project. As a marketing coach with over 30 years of experience, I have been involved in variety of projects at all levels. Concept, design, execution, sales, sales strategies, marketing plans, advertising plans, strategic plans. Over the next few months we will focus in on specific project areas and answer questions and work with you out in Blog land to help you with your marketing needs. A good marketing coach will charge $1000 per month minimum and that will give you approximately 5 hours of marketing consulting time. The good thing about hiring a marketing coach is that there is little or no learning curve. So hope to see you back here. In our next session we will start talking about the basics of marketing and what makes good marketing sense.