Here’s an interesting item, published last week by eMarketing.com.

When ad agencies decide on the ways to publicize their own companies, a full 87% choose not to advertise on Facebook.  Agency ads appear on even a smaller percentage of the other major B2B social media sites–LinkedIn and Twitter.

Here’s the chart showing the percentages:

“Overall,” eMarketer concluded, ” most companies prefer to focus on marketing on social networks, rather than spending money to advertise.”

To read the entire article, click here.

If you’ve followed this blog, you know we’re huge fans of blogging (even though we don’t do it often enough!)

We believe that after creating a professional, user-friendly Web site, blogging should be the next layer in the foundation of any small business marketing plan–and specifically, of any social media plan. Valuable blog posts can pay dividends many times over.

For some reason, blogging intimidates people. It shouldn’t. You’ve got ideas, opinions, suggestions, and experience that can benefit others. Blogging is simply a great way to share that knowledge and introduce yourself to people.

Here’s a quick pointer on blogging from infusionsoft, a marketing automation company.

“The key is to create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience. Keep it consistent and keep it real. Other than that, just have fun with it!  Some suggestions for blog posts include:

• Industry-specific tips and insights

• Special offers or give-aways
• Analysis of recent news items
• Product tutorials
• Humorous anecdotes
• Interviews with employees, customers or partners”

If you’re set up to blog, think of anything in the short list above, and jot a quick post. If you’re not set up, check out WordPress (the format we use) or the also popular blogspot.

Take advantage of one of the best–and free–ways to connect with customers.

Here’s a continuation of what we showed you about social media yesterday. This report, however, is from Hubspot, a company that specializes in inbound marketing–or drawing customers to businesses rather than pushing sales messages outward.

As you can see once again, the success that marketers had with various social media channels depended on whether they were selling to consumers or to other businesses.

Instead of the, “very or somewhat effective” responses given in the Marketing Sherpa chart, the Hubspot  study measured which channels had resulted in the acquisition of a customer. Once again, blogging scored very high in both the B2B and B2C categories. Facebook was strongest in B2C marketing. And LinkedIn was the best social media channel for those businesses selling to other businesses.

So once again, here’s the takeaway: All your friends may be saying, “You have to be on Facebook.” The truth is: You don’t necessarily have to be on Facebook. You need to be where your customers are.  Check around. Look for names of your customers on all of the channels. Then look to see where your competitors are trying to interact with and attract customers.

That simple and cost-free exercise will tell you how best to spend your time, and possibly, your money, on social media.

A new study, from Marketing Sherpa, has found that your best choice for  social media networks depends on whom you’re trying to reach.

For example, if you’re selling to consumers (and provided that your customers are actually using Facebook, and that you can lure visitors with compelling content and/or games, contests, discounts, or coupons), Facebook is probably your best bet.  On the other hand, if you’re selling to businesses, you may want to put your social media resources to use elsewhere–say, on LinkedIn. Take a look at the survey results:Allen T. Sutton, who wrote the blog post describing survey results, noted what he’d expected and a couple or results that surprised him:

“Blogging sits comfortably on top. This does not surprise me since creating content is the most effective SEO tactic , and SEO is a vital part of a good inbound strategy.

“However, two things do surprise me. First, I expected LinkedIn to rank high with B2Bs, but I did not expect it to so clearly beat Facebook. Fewer than 50% of B2B marketers report that their efforts on Facebook were effective. LinkedIn appears to provide the most effective social network for inbound B2B marketers.

“The second thing that surprises me is that YouTube and other video sharing sites are well within the top tier. I have seen great YouTube strategies from a select few marketers, but I did not realize that strong performance was this widespread. I expect even more marketers to start using video sites in the coming years.”

What marketing strategies should work best for you? And especially if you have a limited marketing budget?  We can help you figure it out and start attracting new customers. Contact us.

I just read an interesting round-up of ideas on using video as an effective marketing tool.

Much of the advice consisted of encouragement by experts (and I’m paraphrasing),  to “Just  do it,” with tips on how to spread your video around.

In the comments section, “beenyweenies,” a video marketing professional who did not reveal his or her name or company name, objected strongly, and called most of the suggestions “borderline irresponsible.”

Here are some of “beenyweenies’” key points:

“There is already so much bad video on the internet right now that the world doesn’t need another 50,000 self produced, poorly executed videos of some talking head rambling on…Most of the suggestions seem more geared to appealing to one’s DIY sensibilities, desire to spend nothing on marketing, and our inner narcissism (YOU can be the star in your own video!).

“Beenyweenies” continues: “Even most “professionally” produced videos have a high failure rate if the producers don’t have a solid understanding of video marketing principals….

“There was a time when business owners thought they could get away with slapping together a shoddy website using FrontPage, too. These days, you’d be lucky to get a few dozen hits a month with a site like that, and most business owners wouldn’t dream of doing something so damaging to their brand. Video is no different, which is why I say this article is doing a disservice to its readers.

“People judge a company on the quality of their promotional materials. If your marketing is poorly done, most consumers get a bad feeling about you and move on to a competing provider. There are simply too many choices in the marketplace to get so sloppy with your marketing.”

In the end, marketing, like most else in life, comes down to the advice my father gave to my brother and me while we were growing up: “If you’re going to do something, do it right.”

To read the entire article, and all of the posted comments, click here.