Beyond Blogs To Social Media Marketing

Last week’s cover story in Business Week was entitled “Beyond Blogs”. It was a follow up article to a story that they wrote in 2005 entitled “Blogs will change your business”. This was a great article! So what is beyond blogs? Social Media Marketing. Here in Grand Rapids, Michigan a great deal of businesses are not yet catching on to this new form of Marketing and the research gives several reasons why businesses around the country have not fully taken hold of this online phenomenon. The 2 biggest reasons that businesses are not fully exploiting the tools being given them through Web 2.0 technologies is that they do not fully understand them yet and the second reason is fear.

Most have heard of blogs but they are not sure how to use them for their business. Most businesses owners hear their kids talking about MySpace, FaceBook, and Twitter but don’t realize that these are great places for them to be communicating with their target markets. More and more professionals have their profiles placed on LinkedIn but do not realize that LinkedIn is not a “Monster”.

Then when it comes to Podcast, RSS, VideoCast, and Mobile Networking, business owners eyes begin to glaze over. Then adding to the challenge,any marketing companies do not understand Social Media Marketing, they do not know how to price it, so the stick with the traditional marketing and advertising approaches which statistic show are losing their effectiveness.

In the article “Beyond Blogs” after highlighting that fact that by 2010 Social Media spending will reach nearly 2 billion dollars, Business Week says that the Social Media bubble “might” pop. I laugh at that. Just as they admittedly did not see it coming they do not see what it will morph into. When you think that kids in High School and College live by social media networks, as they enter and take control of the work force, they will take Social Media Marketing to a completely different level; beyond our imagination and beyond blogs.

So, If you do not have Social Media Marketing in your 5 year plan you are going to be in bad shape. However, if you are already beginning your exploration into Social Media Marketing your are going to be standing out from your competitors and capturing a greater market share!

Byte or get bitten!