In the final installment of our series on how to reach out to more customers, we talk about Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
Each of these methods revolve around one thing, interaction. If you expect to create a profile or blog, then just sit back and wait for the customers to come to you, you’re in for a long wait.
Each of these methods has different requirements for success.
What is it?
Facebook for Content Delivery
Facebook is a social network that allows you to post updates and photographs, create and invite people to events, join groups of like-minded friends or business partners, share information, and advertise products and services.
As a business, you can set up a profile page that describes your company and/or products. This profile page also gives you space to write on your ‘wall’ with updates and any other information that you would like to make public.
How can it Help You?
Facebook provides an opportunity to connect with your visitors and to keep your information in front of them. Each time you post an update, photos, or other information on Facebook, your connections are notified, reminding them of your commitment to being a valuable member of the community.
Using Facebook for business marketing taps into an already thriving network of people. Most Facebook users trust their connections more than traditional, non-personalized advertising found on the Web and in print. The more often you post relevant informations for your connections, the more likely you are to gain a positive boost from your Facebook profile.
Facebook also encourages interactivity. If you give a consumer the opportunity to interact with your business or product, you become more memorable and it becomes more likely a shopper will return to your site for information or to make a purchase.
What is it?
Twitter for Content Delivery
Twitter is a social networking tool that allows people to quickly and easily answer the question: “What are you doing?” in less than 140 characters.
Each of these short “Tweets” is posted on your profile, sent to people who have asked to follow your updates, and is fully searchable on Twitter search.
Twitter is fast becoming a major marketing tool as well as a strong social networking tool – just like Facebook, only some would say faster and easier!
How can it help you?
With Twitter you can get your message out fast to people who want to hear from you. You can also tweet links to important or useful content to make it easy for people to find when they search for specific terms with Twitter search. Twitter makes publishing information, promotions, sales, and general marketing material easy to send AND easy for your followers to receive.
Keep an eye on our LiveWire blog (here!) in the coming weeks for a great article that takes a much more in-depth look at Twitter as a marketing tool.
Blog
What is it?
Blog for Content Delivery
A blog is a type of website that generally takes the form of many regular entries of text, photographs, and other information.
How can it help you?
A blog that is attached to your eCommerce website can help in many ways:
- It can increase your number of inbound links as other sites link to the quality content that you are producing in your blog.
- It can drive highly relevant traffic – the kind that converts in higher percentages – to your store through thoughtfully placed links in articles relevant to your products and services.
- It can help to establish you as an expert in your field who cares about giving back to the community.
- It can provide you with an excellent forum to share your promotions, new products, informative articles and other information that your customers are hungry for.
Do you use social networking to improve your ecommerce business? What works for you? What questions do you still have? Leave a comment below.
Written by Megan M.
Tags: e-commerce, ecommerce marketing, social marketing, social media, twitter
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July 27th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I’ve found article writing to be the most effective way of attracting traffic which then became customers. But on the subject of being social, I came across onlywire.com which can also be effective with what is said above.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Facebook? Twitter? MySpace? What are they? Our web filter keeps them away from company employees. I guess if a company allows employees to spend time on social networks it might be the kind of business it could benefit from that marketing. But web research seems to categorize social networkers as people with a lot of time and not much money to spend and a strong case of marketing blindness to tolerate some of the social tools. Great way to market to teenagers and people in the know and in the now.