Product Description
Your company has a website, it has been optimized for search, and you've bought some advertising on some search engines and on some business blogs. It's helping, but you aren't getting the explosive leads that everyone says are so prevalent and easy to find on the web- now what?
It may seem, at first glance, that Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Delicious are just tools for college-aged kids to keep in touch, but the smart business is finding out so much more.
Why Social Media? will help you decide if the social networking, social bookmarking, document sharing and other sites which relay on social engagement via the web, are worthwhile for your business, and guide you towards the basic steps to getting started. After reading it, you'll know enough to start thinking about using social media as part of your marketing plan.
And more importantly, you'll know what you don't know, so that you can make an educated decision about whether to get more help.
Should you decide that the next step in your journey is to hire someone to implement solutions for you, be careful about selecting an "expert".
These days, the social media "experts" are a dime a dozen - you may very well pay for help and get a person who only has two months more experience than you do! Which will make you think "Well, if it's so easy to learn that anyone can become an expert at it, why isn't it working for MY business?"
Well, that's just it. A lot of people claim to be experts in social media, but few truly are - it takes just a few weeks to learn how to use the tools of social media, yet it takes years to learn how to properly integrate this into a marketing plan online and offline, to see how to leverage existing traffic generation patterns, to use it to enhance search strategy without damaging your company's reputation.
So how do you tell who is a knowledgeable person from who is just trying to make a buck off you?
The key question is "who provides on-going value, regardless of the outcome?"
Of course, you can't expect a serious business person to work for you for free, however, you should be able to find examples of them adding value to the community in some way, a way for you to sample their level of knowledge before buying.
To some people "expert" means "I know more than you, enough that you should pay for me to shorten your learning curve."
What you want to find is the person who says "As an expert, I provide value in many ways. Read my books, articles, and other examples of thought leadership, and test my methods before you hire me. Heck, maybe the book will answer all your questions and you won't need me."
Read "Why Social Media?" and you'll see what kind of information a true subject-matter expert can provide on the subject. You'll also learn some basic techniques and bits of online social etiquette that everyone will expect you to abide by, but no one will actually say. Learn them from someone who has the results you want.
It may seem, at first glance, that Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Delicious are just tools for college-aged kids to keep in touch, but the smart business is finding out so much more.
Why Social Media? will help you decide if the social networking, social bookmarking, document sharing and other sites which relay on social engagement via the web, are worthwhile for your business, and guide you towards the basic steps to getting started. After reading it, you'll know enough to start thinking about using social media as part of your marketing plan.
And more importantly, you'll know what you don't know, so that you can make an educated decision about whether to get more help.
Should you decide that the next step in your journey is to hire someone to implement solutions for you, be careful about selecting an "expert".
These days, the social media "experts" are a dime a dozen - you may very well pay for help and get a person who only has two months more experience than you do! Which will make you think "Well, if it's so easy to learn that anyone can become an expert at it, why isn't it working for MY business?"
Well, that's just it. A lot of people claim to be experts in social media, but few truly are - it takes just a few weeks to learn how to use the tools of social media, yet it takes years to learn how to properly integrate this into a marketing plan online and offline, to see how to leverage existing traffic generation patterns, to use it to enhance search strategy without damaging your company's reputation.
So how do you tell who is a knowledgeable person from who is just trying to make a buck off you?
The key question is "who provides on-going value, regardless of the outcome?"
Of course, you can't expect a serious business person to work for you for free, however, you should be able to find examples of them adding value to the community in some way, a way for you to sample their level of knowledge before buying.
To some people "expert" means "I know more than you, enough that you should pay for me to shorten your learning curve."
What you want to find is the person who says "As an expert, I provide value in many ways. Read my books, articles, and other examples of thought leadership, and test my methods before you hire me. Heck, maybe the book will answer all your questions and you won't need me."
Read "Why Social Media?" and you'll see what kind of information a true subject-matter expert can provide on the subject. You'll also learn some basic techniques and bits of online social etiquette that everyone will expect you to abide by, but no one will actually say. Learn them from someone who has the results you want.
