Reader Polls: Social Media Tools
I’ve been running a poll on this blog for a few months now asking the question ‘have you used any of the following social media tools to market your business?’.
The options and answers in order of popularity were:
• Blog 67%
• LinkedIn 55%
• Facebook 48%
• Other 39%
• Del.icio.us 30%
What does this tell us?
First of all it confirms the significance of blogging as a key business communications tool. It’s interesting to see how many different types of business have jumped onto this marcoms tool, with everyone from CEOs to technical R+D experts, professional services firms and more. Working with small businesses I find blogging can provide a good platform for demonstrating your expertise, creating a feedback channel for customers, providing a place to foster conversation with existing and prospective customers and much more. If you want advice or some ideas for how to get a blog going for your business I recommend reading the BetterBusinessBlogging blog written by expert Mark White.
LinkedIn is another great resource but for networking. There is a lot of debate in the blogosphere as to how valuable LinkedIn really is, but for me there is no question of its potential. A good example is an old colleague of mine who recently contacted me through linkedIn. She had recently started up as a business operations consultant and was looking to expand her network and service offering. There may now be opportunities for us to work together either on the same clients, or through referring business opportunities. For ideas on how to get the most from LinkedIn, read Guy Kawasaki and LinkedIntelligence.
Facebook needs no introduction. It’s amazing how frequently I receive marketing messages from groups I belong to on Facebook, from music bands to clubs I belong to. One of my clients uses Facebook to manage its alumni and as a source of recruitment. There are no end to the possibilities. For bigger brands you might even consider advertising on Facebook.
The main point that came across from the survey is that people are using a mixture of different social media tools to market their business. A blog is a good start, but develop your LinkedIn profile in parallel and cross promote both platforms. Once you have a blog up and running and your LinkedIn profile is starting to grow, look at Twitter, or start social book marking with Delicious.
There is a good argument that you should have an objective in mind before you start with social networking and some goals in place in order that you can measure whether your efforts have been successful. I agree with this entirely for blogging but for the less strategic tactics, like LinkedIn, I would suggest just getting started and trying it for a month to see what you can achieve, you may just be surprised how many doors it can open and the costs are tiny – in most cases just your time.
What’s the next reader survey then?
Well it’s online now in the right hand sidebar and I would like your help to understand the impact of the global recession on your business..:
What tactics have you employed to combat the global recession?
Increased marketing spend
Made redundancies
Cut costs
Changed strategic direction
Refinanced business
Other
What Can President Barack Obama do for your Business?
Ok so I won’t pretend to be able to predict how President Elect Barack Obama will impact your business world, but I would like to offer my congratulations to the new President and all of the American people for what will undoubtedly be an exciting time of change.
Also, a huge well done to John McCain. What a fantastically gracious runner-up! If you haven’t already seen them, here are both of their speeches…
Tag:Reader PollsLatest Reader Poll Results
It’s been a while since I started the last reader poll and it’s time to close this one off. So I asked the question, ‘which of the following direct sales tactics is the most effective?’ with the following options: Face to face, Telesales, Direct mail, Email shots, Other.
It was no surprise to see face to face receive the lion’s share of the votes with 79% of all respondents choosing this option. This was followed in second place by telesales at 14%, which for me has always been a very challenging tactic and I’m sure I’m not alone.
What’s required to make the most from face to face sales then. Well, a good starting point is to ensure you have a set of well designed and branded business cards, much like you can pick up from Moo.com. I run a blogger networking event in London and these cards are an essential ingredient of everyone’s networking tool kit.
For a list of other great sales tips, I recommend heading over to the excellent salesadvicetraining.com blog.
Thanks to all those that took part in the reader poll. The next question is now live in the right hand side bar and asks simply, ‘have you started using any of the following social media tools for marketing your business – blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, Other?’
June Reader Poll Results
The latest reader poll has just come to an end and with some interesting results. I asked my readers the question:
Should PR companies approach bloggers differently to journalists?
And the answer, most definitely yes.
73% of voters agreed that bloggers need to be treated differently. Of the remaining, 18% didn’t know and 9% were happy with traditional methods.
For me this is fairly conclusive: bloggers want to be treated differently, something both PR agents and others who want to influence bloggers should bear in mind.
Ok so for this next month I’m asking:
Which of the following direct sales tactics are most effective:
Telesales
Email shots
Direct mail
Face to face
Please answer in the poll on the right hand sidebar now.
—————————————————————— >>
Tag:Reader Polls-
Recent Conversations
-
- Alchemist: I wasn’t impressed. This isn’t a matter of subliminal messaging at all....
- Jez Hunt: Segmentation is SUCH an important part of marketing today… and it’s...
- Commercial Real Estate Florida: Awesome video and very inspiring. Thanks for sharing!
- Rabbit Pearl: Great tip! Its very very interesting when you learn about that you can choose your...
- car insurance by state prices: Yes its very important to have up to date knowledge of your...
- Tereza: I heard some time ago about this book and most interesting part for me was his...
- Hosted PBX: Smartphones are the way to go. Offices using Blackberries have flexibility and...
- funny tshirts: thanks for this.. great opener to me about crowdsourcing. thanks again
-
Loading ...
-
Subscribe to this Blog
