eSpire Marketing

How else could Facebook steal from Twitter than to allow users to tag their friends in every status update. I logged on to my Facebook account today to say happy birthday to a few friends, and I noticed that now you can tag friends in status updates. Does this mean that the Facebook wall is becoming less and less important? I rarely even check my Facebook wall. I am usually working in the other inner pages of Facebook, or watching my news feed. Twitter’s advantages are becoming less and less. In fact, I don’t think it has any advantages at all.
The fact of the matter is that, Facebook does a better job at getting rid of spammers, Facebook is able to engage its users in many more ways than Twitter, and Facebook has stolen everything good that Twitter did and implemented it in their own way to their system. While Twitter is a great communication tool for, customer service reasons, Twitter will never be the marketing tool that Facebook has become.
If you haven’t already done so, hop off the Twitter bandwagon, the porn industry has infested it’s inner pages, and once that happens the success of the website is sure to follow. If you’d like more information on the way that status update tagging will work make sure you check out this article. They went into greater detail than I felt necessary. Have a good one readers!

IMG_0002.JPGTrust and transparency are the key to raising your revenue. I don’t know about the rest of you but I have certainly noticed a huge number of websites, applications, and blogs integrating facebook connect to their sites. Why is that? Well it’s simple really, everyone is finally cayltching on that social media is here to stay.
Whether your marketing department wants to believe it or not it is here to stay and if you don’t embrace it soon you’ll find yourself on the outskirts of your industry and fast. This economy has made it increasingly more difficult to sell things to people because most people, including myself, are buying simply out of neccesity and less and less based on want. On top of that people are researching more and more the products they do decide to buy before they make the final purhase. They need to trust the product and the company they buy it from.
This is always the analogy I use when I’m explaining myself to others; Think of it like this, are you more likely to buy the product that you saw on a billboard on the drive home, or the product that one of your friends can give you a review of and recommend? For me the obvious answer is to buy the product my friend recommends.
Social Media gives your business the opportunity to create that brand and product trust (as well as consumer recommendation) that is so vital to your business’s success. That is why we are all seeing the influx of Facebook and Twitter integration everywhere on the web. It gives your company the power to control (or at least influence) the conversation around your brand and your products and in turn transparency, trust, and inthe end sales.

I’ll leave you with this. My top 3 best practices for creating brand loyalty and trust with social media and that equals sales for you.

1. Ask the consumer – So you want to add a new product to your website? Go to your Twitter or Facebook page and ask your followers which one they like best. They’ll appreciate the fact that you want their opinion and they’ll feel as if they have some ownership in the decisions for your company.
2. Follow your brand mentions- Watching to see who is talking about you and what they are saying is important. That way if a customer has a complaint to make, you can deal with it out in the open and take care of them. That visibility and transparency will create brand loyalty and trust down the road.
3. Give away free stuff – The best way to win people over is to give them something for little or no return on their part. I realize from an ROI standpoint that might be hard to do but they’ll tell their friends and that word of mouth marketing is what you really should strive for.

It’s not hard really. You just have to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. Wake up people, welcome to the new economy. The consumer driven economy.