The old vanilla ways of mass communication marketing are quickly losing their effectiveness in today's financially cautious economy. Now, everyone wants the personal experience and direct communication that has become available with social media like Facebook, Twitter, and interactive business blogs.
Public relation campaigns are finally turning away from mass message advertising and toward public relationships again. There are two ways you can approach any relationship: actively or passively. Social media is the new age way of fostering active relationships with your affiliates and target market. Social media isn’t supposed to sell, it is supposed to influence.
Social, A.K.A. Word of Mouth, Marketing
Since becoming a web presence consultant for small businesses, I have conducted hundreds of case studies and developed marketing strategies with and without social media. The companies that integrated social mediums into their plan began getting results almost twice as fast as those with a comparable investment of a website with an SEO and SEM only strategy.Our social network profiles and integration with web 2.0 have a much broader potential reach (at an insanely more affordable price) than that of television and radio combined. Websites are instantly available to the 1,596,270,108 people in this world who access the internet. Of course, social media is catching on quite rapidly, as well.
Social media encourages businesses to be:
- transparent,
- consistent,
- and genuinely caring to their customers and clients.
There are so many ways to advertise and establish your business brands. Some companies use tactics like catchy (maybe a bit annoying) jingles, some really attempt to make a connection with their audience (people don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care, right?), and some are thought provoking and witty as if they want to guilt you into buying their product/service. Personally, I prefer the ones that really speak an encouraging message, although the funny ones are fun, too. :)
"Old-Fashioned" PR isn't Dead. . .Yet
Effective advertisement builds up, tears down, or educates. Here are two examples of mass communication via television and radio that I want to share that are good examples of my favorite types of advertising.Advertisement Message 1:
We Care About Your Community
The first is an Allstate Insurance commercial called "Back to the Basics".Advertisement Message 2:
We Care About You
I also want to mention a CVS commercial which I am sad to say I have no media file for.- Here's the basic message:
- Starts with a Minute Clinic nurse helping a mom take care of her son's illness.
- Mom goes home and gets a checkup call from the nurse.
- The mom says, "Thanks for the follow up."
- The nurse says, "We call that following through."
This left me with a good mental image of a health care provider that really cared about her patient. This was exactly what CVS was hoping for, right?
Look at Publicity the Right Way
In the internet business everything is public. Don’t just say, "I can't" because you inadvertently burn bridges. You can always ask your new found business connections on LinkedIN or ask.com, questions about how to work through almost any situation.The more you learn about your niche business and build complimentary skills, the better you will be able to meet your clients' needs efficiently. Remember, how you work on public relations and your reputation, is directly related to your influence and reach.
Read other people’s blogs and then leave them genuine comments. You know how it feels when someone takes the time to comment about something you wrote or did online. It's the same with everyone.
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