Archive for April 18th, 2010
Social Media: Word of Mouth Advertising At It’s (Targeted) Best
April 18th, 2010 at 1:31 pm by Livvie
Recently I responded to a colleague, Rita Zamora’s, post discussing social media and the mistake sometimes made of thinking it’s free.
As noted on my response, I agree it’s a mistake to pretend social media is free. Although joining the sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc are free, there is the time involved in maintaining the sites, especially when maintained well.
However when you consider the massive amount of money spent by businesses/practices on traditional advertising/marketing, yellow page ads, direct mail out’s that reach about 3% at best 5% of the market mailed to (makes you wonder what happened to the other 95% of their investment). and magazine ads, then you factor in how many, or should we say how few, people are actually reached with traditional advertising, the cost of budgeting money for a ongoing social media presence pales in comparison.
Printed ads are placed in books that go out into surrounding area’s that would most likely not drive all the way to your business, therefore, much of the paid information falls into non-targeted areas.
Add to that the fact only about 15% of the population still uses telephone books and print ads with the other 85% using online sources, you can see why creating and maintaining your online line presence is critical to your business.
With social media, you have the golden opportunity to directly target your market as you increase your business/practice exposure while ultimately creating incredible opportunities to be visible and responsive to your market.
As with anything we build, social media takes time and as noted “time is money”, but whether social media is handled “in-house” by a (paid) employee or “outsourced” to a social media specialist, social media is word of mouth advertising at it’s (targeted) best!
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Would you like to learn more about using Social Media to increase your online visibility, build profitable relationships, and grow your practice? Livvie Matthews, a Certified Social Media Specialist, Blogger, and Speaker, is passionate about helping dentists leverage the incredible marketing power social media presents for their practice and their bottom line! Email livvie@writebusiness.net or visit http://www.writebusiness.net/blog
Posted in Mktg-Internet, Social Media | 
Tags: Building Business, Internet Marketing, Livvie Matthews, social media marketing | 
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