According to email marketing specialists StrongMail 62% of companies are keen to increase their spend on social media and 66% of them would like to incorporate this into their email marketing campaigns. The problems seem to lie in companies being unsure on two counts: firstly they do not know how to measure a campaigns success and secondly they are not sure how to implement the integration of social media marketing with email.

As outlined by Propero, email marketing is popular this year. Its a cost effective, efficient way to promote your business. In fact email gives the best return on investment of all the digital channels available: $46 for every pound spent (Direct Marketing Association report 2008). Additionally research from Forrester in July 2008 showed that email was the top way in which people share content online.

What is Social Media?

Social media are methods via which ordinary people can express themselves online in an easy and accessible way. They are wide in range. Examples are:

Internet forums (eg Google groups)
Weblogs (eg Propero Digital!)
Social blogs ( eg Twitter – micro blogging)
Podcasts (podcast.com)
Photos (eg Flickr)
Video ( eg YouTube)

The growth of this sector has been huge over the last three years and more and more companies are capitalising on this method of reaching people. Its interactive. Everyone gets a voice. This appeals because it is helpful in the creation of relationships.

Do your research
What are your competitors doing on-line? Research their activities to see what they are doing for your potential customers and how these customers are responding.

Where are your customers hanging out?
Find out where your customers are hanging out online. There are huge variations between different groups of people. Women, for example are more likely to spend more time online and use forums. Mothers in particular use social support networks. Younger people use video sites much more than older groups. Learn from your customers. They are your teachers.

Keep you eye on the ball
Social media is an ever changing area so you need to keep abreast of the developments and adjust your plans accordingly.  Things that are popular today can be superceeded in a couple of months by something totally new.

Communicate with your customers
Email allows you to inform your customers about what you are offering in terms of social media. If you start a blog for example, let all your email contacts know. Blogs allow your clients to access you more often.

Conversely in your blog allow people to comment. Also, allow them to email you from it. This increases your email list and allows users the facility to comment privately if this is what they prefer. Feedback will be useful in informing you of any changes that need to be made.

Measuring Return on Investment
Measuring ROI can be tricky with social media unless you are using paid advertisement. This is one criticism which is often levelled at marketing companies.

Testing the water – try things out in a small way to start with. The joy of social media is that it is free to try so your costs will only be staffing ones.

Asking questions – as always with marketing ask the right questions to find out how and when your customers found you.

As reported by Propero Digital, blogging is a very useful online marketing tool when used as a part of an overall marketing strategy. The launch of the latest iPhone model, 3GS, proves it. Furthermore its a viral phenomenon: its not just on the Apple blogs where people are hearing about the iPhone its on other people’s too.

A Nielsen Online report said that the buzz a week before the 3G S release increased its blog mentions by 1,226%. When the phone became available on the 19th of June, the blog figures doubled compared to the week before.

A positive blogging buzz is exciting for online marketing. Its viral potential is something that cannot be purchased but is only effective if the product is perfect for the market, otherwise the value of viral marketing turns on its head and becomes a quickly spreading disaster.

Apple was the most visited computer hardware manufacturer site in May 2009. It drew 55,716 visitors compared to Hewlett Packard therefore it’s potential for being picked up on blogging sites is therefore huge but it can happen for small companies too. All you need is something that captures the public’s imagination.

In 2008 two Northern Ireland students Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, launched The Big Word Project which invited people to create a new dictionary. They sell words to individuals who can then link those words to their websites and thus ‘creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.’ Currently they charge $1 per letter and the proceeds have gone to pay for their Masters Degrees. This site has attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide which has helped them to raise the money that they need.

According to Hitwise, paid searches are down by 26% for the same period last year. This is a significant change which is said to reflect the problems of the current economic climate.

What are paid searches?
Paid searches are those where a company pays for its ranking on a search engine. It is something that is very easy to set up but requires a certain level of skill to implement well. Your company’s important keywords are identified (this is a skilful process which takes careful analysis and a degree of creative thought and artistry). Once you have these words you can approach search engines who then charge you for promoting your site according to your keyword choices.

The paid searches appear at the top of the search listings and are usually distinguishable from the natural listings by a difference in size, colour or highlighting. The theory is that the top listings will be clicked on more. Each time someone clicks on your link you pay the search engine company an agreed amount which is dependant on the popularity of your chosen keywords. An accurate keyword campaign can be very lucrative and a misguided one, very costly. Google Adwords makes the process very easy and anyone can set up an account and start experimenting with the results. Google analytics is a programme which looks at your traffic and click-through conversion rates and helps to guide further changes and although available to all, is a complicated and technical programme.

Decline in Paid Searches
The Hitwise survey found that in the four-week period ending in April 2008, nearly 10% (9.84%) of search engine traffic came from paid clicks. This figure declined by 26% for the same period in 2009 to 7.25%. The only sector which reported an increase in paid advertisement was education which saw a rise from 1.39% to 1.45%.

Reasons for Change
Although paid searches guarantee you a top-spot they can be costly. Avoiding high costs means being skilled at choosing the right words and analysing the results and this means either investing a lot of time in getting you or your staff up to speed or employing experts who can guide your campaign within your overall marketing strategy.

Avoiding high costs has led people to look at cheaper ways to market their online presence. A greater awareness of how search engines like to rank has led to people making more of their sites in a bid to increase natural listings. The search engines are super-open with information on how to make to most of your site naturally.

Social networking sites have created a platform from where to funnel visitors to your site and their increasing popularity is having its effect. The same applies to bloging which is a cost effective way to gather cross-market traffic. Additionally email marketing has increased in popularity as it is a highly personal and cost effective way to target your market.

Conclusions
We will more than likely see an increase in creative, natural and viral marketing campaigns which will reflect the needs of the current economic climate.  However with the high levels of competition that are set to increase in the natural search listings market, paid listings are still a very serious option.  We may see a reduction in costs for pay-per-click as there will be less competition for keywords.  The important point is that whatever you do it needs to be cost effective.  Implementing the right campaign and analysing the results to capitalise on your successes and minimise your risks will be essential and seeking expert guidance in order to do this is highly recommended.

So what is so great about blogging? We here about it all the time. We are told that it’s important to have a blog. But why?

From a technical point of view there is one main reason to blog:

Search Engines love it
If you provide links from your blog to your website then search engines, and Google in particular, will be happy. If you provide relevant and informative content and establish a good readership for your blog then any links coming from it to your site will be considered favourably by the search engines spiders. Favourable links are one factor which increases your website rating on the search engines which means you will be ranked higher up the list.

This is a very important reason to create a blog but it is by far the only reason.

Relationships
What blogs allow you to do is develop relationships with your clients and prospective clients. In an online world this is even more important than ever. In business, no matter how we couch it, everything is still about relationships. If you create a great rapport with your clients and prospects they are more likely to return to you than to your competitors.

Relationships imply give and take, don’t they? This is easy with a blog. People can make comments on your blog posts thus enabling you to keep in touch with your audience and respond accordingly.

Blogs are also a very respectful method of staying in touch as readers can choose whether they subscribe to feeds which tell them when you have added any more information. And respect, after all, is a very important part of any relationship.

How do you judge whether a relationship is working? You listen to feedback. This is easy to do with blogs as people are invited to make their comments. Ultimately you have control over whether people’s comments are published in the same way as you have control over whether you divulge information shared between you and your partner.

The other main reason for having a blog is the facility via which you can -

Share Information
Sharing information is important for business. It’s so easy and so cheap with a blog. The main platforms for blogging offer free access and they are also very easy to use without any technical knowledge. Even if you are a larger business this can be done in-house to save on costs.

Some companies are run purely from blog sites and it is possible to sell goods and services via this medium although it does require a little more technical knowledge than a straighforward blog.

Sharing information with your public is vital. They can get to know you, your company, your products and services.

The sharing of excellent information builds trust and rapport (back to relationships), the foundations of good business.

As blogs are written on easy to access platforms you can quickly pass on new information to your readers. You do not have to rely on web developers to make complicated and costly changes to your website. You can be responsive to changes in the marketplace and your readership.