Tell me… Could you describe and explain social media and online marketing to your grandma, in such a way that she could confidently use it to potentially better a business? I know I couldn’t.

I did however go to a seminar today on this very subject that did exactly that! No the room wasn’t full of ‘grandmas’, but it did break down the mysterious lore that is social media and online marketing into easily digested nuggets of knowledge.
This seminar was hosted by Generate UK at the spectacular Donnington Grove in their ‘Cloud Suite’. The ‘Cloud Suite’ is a luxurious room lined with lovely old paintings, overshadowed by a fantastic painted ceiling. There was free tea and coffee, there was glorious sunshine and there was a friendly buzz as attendees began to arrive.

We were all seated in some rather fancy chairs and we covered a variety of things from e-marketing myth busting to the fundamentals of the ‘twitterverse’. I already knew some of the basics that were covered but it was nice to see that all the fundamentals were explained so that everyone else understood the more advanced things that were to follow. Overall it was very well presented and it left no one guessing.

Over the course of the morning I mentally noted a number of clever marketing devices for later use. I learned that no more are the days where one could simply post a few thousand identical links all over the Internet to rank their page from ‘unheard of’ to ‘the industry authority’ in a matter of weeks; nor can you purchase links on leading websites to boost your own rankings… Well, not without major repercussions anyway. The emphasis nowadays is on natural link building, quality and content with a hint of tweeting; although the ‘Tweeting’ is optional.

Natural link building is the activity that promotes the recommendation of your online presence by getting other online entities to refer to your site naturally via a link; this could be as a point of interest, or perhaps in the form of a recommendation of your products or services. This is done of their own accord. This is now necessary because the search engines have ‘wizened-up’ to those manipulative chaps that have previously gone out to the marketplace to spam every existing website with their own links and false recommendations; all in a bid to rank higher on the search engine results. The current digital marketing paradigm now dictates that it is better for a company ‘footprint’ to grow gradually over time as more and more web users begin to trust the site in question and recognise it as an authority in the field.  For those of you that didn’t know, an online footprint is the measurement of your own online presence size… Yet another vital thing I learned today that I have lovingly passed on to you.

Now, can you tell me of something currently going on in your life or workplace that you’ve told other people about? I bet you can. Yet, many companies with an online presence clam-up and communicate next to nothing. If you have some experience in a particular field, enough for you to generate money from, it must be worth shouting about surely?
This is where we come on to the subject of quality and content. I learned today that some companies are beginning to embrace this as a guideline for their online activity. Not too many years ago the majority of companies had a static website that was occasionally updated with some generic company news. Nowadays however, the early adopters of new digital marketing methods and technology are beginning to share their knowledge, views and information online. This interactivity allows users to communicate with the company in a dynamic fashion allowing the aforementioned businesses to stay firmly on the industry pulse; this is due to their grass roots interaction with the end consumer, so businesses are more aware of what these consumers are thinking right now.

How is this done? In a surprisingly simple way actually, it’s all a question of sharing targeted, interesting and relevant content with the web surfers you want to attract to your business.  This does require that you embrace some of the new social media platforms that have recently come to power though i.e. Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us etc. So although the process may seem straight forward, there is a significant learning curve involved which puts many companies off.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you and I run a fashion outlet for customised clothing and accessories. We could do our traditional market research, develop prototype designs and then hope that when these items finally go on sale they will indeed, sell. This is admittedly, a very short-sighted example but now imagine this; instead of doing our in-house research with a few participants… We opened up a website listing all of our latest designs. We could then use a platform like Twitter to ‘Tweet’ (post information about) those designs to the masses whilst linking back to the main site. This would then open the door to other ‘Twitterers’ (Twitter users) for them to offer valuable feedback on our designs and to perhaps make some valuable recommendations for change. Not only that, but by engaging with the fashion conscious community on Twitter, we could explore what other people in the field are talking about and then throw in our own ‘two cents’ on the subject. We have just outlined a way to improve our customer interaction, improve our market research and product design process as well as establish ourselves as an authority in the field of fashion by expressing our expert opinion in up-to-the-minute conversations on the subject; all the while building natural links and generating traffic to our sales website, hopefully earning some extra money. Of course such a strategy would require much more thought and planning, but such a scenario is not uncommon where clever individuals have managed to leverage this powerful technology to their own business benefit.

The basics however are centred on sharing relevant, quality content with other users in an engaging way so that these users will interact with your business. Got a new product line? Tweet it. Planning a big PR event? Set up an events page on Facebook. Little things like this as part of a wider marketing plan can really level the playing field when competing for business against larger faceless corporations. Consumers like to know there is a bit of humanity in the business workings somewhere, something they can relate to. This is what makes quality content sharing on these innovative platforms so damned powerful.