Word of Mouth and Social Media Advertising

Word of mouth has always been and always will be the best advertising any business can get.  The Internet stepped up the pace and made its own version- viral marketing.   If something looks great or comes free, it gets shared among friends and friends of friends and the cycle keeps repeating itself.  A couple tools an online business and for that matter an offline business should have, is their own customized business blog.  It is the way to share great information about how a product or service benefits people.  The other must-have tool is a Twitter account, and some good training on how to build a real community of people interested in what you offer and what news you can share about your business and industry.  Think of Twitter as your headlining tool and your business blog as the content delivery system that Twitter can link to.  Professional blog customization should include integrating your Twitter feed on your business blog.  If you have a great bit of news and a 140 character headline that hooks people's curiosity, then you have a winning formula that gets people to retweet your tweet.  Take the time to really learn social media advertising using Twitter, there's the right and smart way and the other way. Checkout Beginner's Guide to Twitter, the first seven lessons are five bucks and well worth the time.

Incentivize Word of Mouth Through Social Media Networking

There is great power in word of mouth applied through a well thought out incentive offering.  A great way we see great success is inviting people to like your Facebook fanpage and receive a reward, for instance a promo code for taking certain actions such as just becoming a fan, or become a fan and write on the wall something about the product or service you like, add a picture or video and receive a greater reward.  Since we do Facebook Customization, we can put the whole strategy together with custom landing pages, even a mini website built into a Facebook tab page.  We've seen this work incredibly well by using a customer email list to invite to become fans, and explain the actions to take.  Also, place Facebook ads asking to visit and become a fan.  Targeting certain demographics is pretty good using Facebook's order page.  Couple these to website strategies together and you have a pretty good start at building fan relations and future sales.