Social Media Marketing
What are your goals?

Engaging your customer? Branding?

Positioning your organization as an expert? Staying connected?

What is social media marketing and what can it do for your company?

Social Media utilizes online tools to communicate. Blogs, video, podcasts, discussion boards and social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the social media marketing tools. Companies like Walmart, Starbucks, Coach and Sony are successfully using social media marketing to communicate with their customers and drive business. Social media can be amazingly powerful, in fact, a recent survey by Millward Brown indicates that despite weakened economic conditions, over 75% of senior marketers say they expect spending for new media and online initiatives will increase in the next year.

If you haven’t started developing a plan to incorporate social media into your marketing mix, you need to. One of the tools that is rapidly growing in popularity are Podcasts. Here are five great reasons to start a podcast.

  1. When done on a consistent basis, podcasts increase a company’s ranking among the search engines. Search engine robots hunt for dynamic content, which they use to determine the ranking of a website or blog. Your position goes up when robots return and "crawl" (or read) the content on your site. If you don't have new content for it to read, it stops visiting, and you go down the search engine rankings as other websites with newer content move up. Podcasting is the least expensive, most efficient tool for Search Engine Optimization.

  2. Podcasting gives a company or individual an opportunity to emerge as an expert in a given field. Prospects and clients choose to listen to your podcasts, so you can be sure that the people receiving your podcast are interested in what you have to offer. Podcasts increase an organization’s visibility and credibility for current and potential customers. Here are some statistics about people who listen to podcasts from a survey conducted by Edison Media Research in April 2008. The number of people listening/viewing this media type is growing at a rapid rate, 7% growth since 2006. In April of 2008, 9% of Americans downloaded and listened to an audio podcast, that's 23 million people. The podcast audience is primarily individuals between the ages of 25-54. The split among men and women is almost even, 53% and 47% respectively. Over half of the podcasting consumers have at least a college degree. It is likely that your podcast is being viewed by a well educated individual, and one that may be the key decision maker in another organization.

  3. Podcasting as part of a marketing mix is not at a maturity stage yet, so those using this medium will appear to be at forefront of emerging technologies. If the content is informative and sought after, then the company or individual will become a known as ‘the’ source for such information, which means PR and web references that boost your reputation. Podcasting is an ideal way to build a relationship, which will solidify your company as the leader in a particular industry/product.

  4. Podcasting can help an already established, but out-of-touch brand connect to a new demographic and create a fresh look. By using tools from all aspects of social and internet marketing, an older company can align itself with new ideas and new consumers - without abandoning the traditional marketing efforts that made it successful in the first place. A new company with no brand recognition can instantly have access to and get feedback from a vast audience. A small, unknown company can create a brand for themselves by choosing relevant, helpful topics for their podcasts, and establish a base of customers by encouraging podcast subscriptions.

  5. Most importantly, podcasting is a way for any company to produce informative, entertaining content for listeners to enjoy and learn from. By connecting with consumers in ways other than overt advertising, YOUR MARKET will associate your company as being helpful, informative and entertaining. When making decisions about purchases, consumers will recall their positive interaction with your company are more likely to do business with you. Relationships are critical to your success! Consumers want to interact with the people they do business with.

Are podcasts right for your company? Podcasts are not difficult to produce, but they do require a commitment. In order to be effective, podcasting on a regular schedule is essential. Podcasting, or Videocasting, which includes pictures or video, give your customers a way to watch or listen to your information at their leisure. They can download your communication to their MP3 player or computer to listen to on their timeline. As with any medium you use for communications, your content is critical.

If you want more information on podcast or videocasts, give us a call, we can help you develop a plan for your podcast or video cast together and incorporate it into your marketing mix. Call today and incorporate this powerful medium into your marketing strategy. Lisa Formica 215-464-0111.