3 Business Benefits of Social Media for Software Companies

People often ask me about the benefits of a social media.  If your business is going to invest in something, you want to know what you get in return, right?  Basically, social media offer several benefits.

First, social media helps your search engine ranking.

The bigger your website, the better your search engine ranking. Most software companies don’t have extremely large website.  Social media lets you add posts and blog items that rank like web pages.   Blogs and social media posts also help your sales effort.  You can alert buyers to the latest upgrades and features quickly.  This is important because buyers today want to learn all they can about your product before they contact your company. 

Social media give your sales people more sales material.  As they speak with prospects, they can refer them to your blog, Facebook page, etc., for more information or discussion about a feature.  They can also show prospects a presentation on YouTube or SlideShow about a particular feature.  This is especially handy when talk with prospects over the phone.

WordPress, Google+ page, YouTube, FlickR and SlideShow are popular platforms for storing company information.  They are free, easy to use and indexed by the search engines.  Facebook and Twitter are good mechanisms to use to let people know you have new information available.

Second, to aid lead generation, you can embed organic keyword in your posts.  Using the same keywords in your blog items and posts that your prospects use in their online searches helps your prospects find your product.  Put a tagline describing your product’s benefits and the geographic area you serve at the bottom of your blog/post and you now have a free ad online.  Be sure to include a click to a contact form on your site.  

Third, lead nurturing is a natural use of social media.  Social media lets you contact people without disrupting them the way a phone call, or even an email, does.  In effect, a prospect can ask a question without inviting a 10-minute sales pitch from you.  Just be sure you are diligent about answering questions.  And, yes, every question deserves an answer.

Prospects don’t want to be sold.  They want to find appropriate product for their needs, kick the tires, get other people’s opinions about the company’s reputation, expertise and how they treat their customers, and maybe even use the product for free before they start a sales conversation.   

Social media lets you publicize your attributes in all these areas.

See you on the net.

--Paige

MultiPlanet Marketing, Inc.

Put your marketing on steroids

Need help starting your social media program?  Just shoot us an email, call or comment below.

pmiller@multiplanetmarketing.com, 610.687.2690.

The Answer to January 10 "test yourself" question:


In January 2010, Disney World’s “Give a Day, Get a Day” promotion offered a free one-day pass to Disney World to anyone who signed up and worked on the National Day of Service celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday.  More than 600,000 people took advantage of the offer.  

5 Strategic Marketing Insights from Amazon

Amazon homepage

Most people think of Amazon as an e-commerce site where you buy books.  But, actually, they are a major player in  (1) retailing, (2) e-commerce development (3) inventory outsourcing, (4) advertising, and (5) IT hosting.

What can we learn from Amazon?  Plenty.

1.  Over the last few years, we watched as Amazon moved from online bookstore to online e-book, Kindle and Kindle Fire tablet seller.  That was a great move and a logical one, given what happened to the music industry.  Lesson One:  You must evolve your product even if it cannibalizes your current product.  (If you don't, someone else will.)  Now the Kindle Fire launches them into the tablet market.

2.  As logical as the e-book extension way, so was their business extension into consumer goods.  If people come to your site to look for books, why not add more products to the drop down list? Lesson Two: leverage your brand recognition, traffic stream, reputation and skill sets based on your selling model.  Amazon realized they were not in the book business but, rather, the online retailing business.  Borders and Barnes & Nobles were way late to that party.

3.  With their huge inventory of products, it's only logical to want to advertise those product.  But the more products you have the bigger your marketing budget has to be, right?  Apparently not.  Amazon crowd-sources some of their marketing, letting bloggers and website owners recommend products and link the reader directly to Amazon or display banner ads for a small cut of the revenues. 

Lesson Three:  Your customers are an asset; let them help you.  This concept borders on genius to those who do not spend 8-hours a day online.  This concept is evidence of a complete immersion in Web 2.0 and social media.  Basically, its the Google and Facebook model, but at the  the personal website level.  It leverages your customer-base, using the latest social media concepts and technology.

4.  Amazon also provides a e-commerce solutions through their Webstore for anyone who wants to be an e-tailer. They offer everything from website design to hosting, shopping cards, credit card processing and inventory management.  Again, they are leveraging their core competences and staying at the fore-front of the e-commerce tidal wave.  Lesson Four: White label your technology to smaller companies.

5.  All of these Amazon services require computer storage and CPU.  And when you are good at hosting and managing websites, what do you do?  Make hosting and managing applications a business line, too.  In fact, Amazon Web Service is one large provider of cloud computing services.  They provide hosting for Hoot Suite, TMZ, Farmville and many, many others.  Now, if they can get Kindle Fire users to store their music in the cloud, think of the growth. Lesson Five:  If you have to do the work anyway, do it for others, too, and charge them.

Amazon's expansion seem entirely logical and, in fact, the best strategic paths are the ones that are no-brainers.  Marketing a new product shouldn't be an uphill climb.  (If it is, your product is not filling a need better than your competitors fill it.)


But Amazon is very unusual in that each component in its supply chain--from marketing to technology to customer service to operations--does double duty as a product.  Every department is expert enough at what it does to sell its services outside the company.  And that's a strategic marketing plan few companies can achieve.

If you were Jeff Bezos, what would be your next strategic move?
--Paige
MultiPlanet

Got content? SEO Is Great, But Content is King

If your small business has thrived mostly by "word-of-mouth" marketing, you know you need to invest in marketing to go to the next level. Word-of-mouth marketing eventually becomes too slow a sales channel for most companies (except those that come out with disruptive, cool technologies, like the iPhone).

Interactive marketing might be the right next step for your business--but recognize its advantages and, more importantly, its limitations.

Interactive marketing includes optimizing your website (SEO), setting up your Facebook and Twitter pages, building links, buying AdWords and building great looking landing pages.

But, sooner or later, interactive marketing leads to harder stuff: CONTENT, lots and lots of content.

Content is still king. Content builds your brand, your reputation, your persona and the niche for your product. Content lets people get to know your company, what it does, and what it stands for. Social media sites exist to be a show place for your content and a forum for communicating with your customer.

So, before you hire a tech-whiz to jump into interactive marketing, realize that someone in your organization will need to feed that person CONTENT--lots and lots of content.

And who will develop that content? Developing content can be difficulat, especially if you already have a full time job running, say, the product development department or the sales department. If you aren't ready to answer that questions, you aren't ready for interactive marketing. It may be more cost-effective to hire a marketing person and, then, hire a sub-contractor to do the SEO, social media and AdWord set-up and tracking.

Don't let the dazzle of the Internet tools blind you to the need for a solid content

--Paige Miller
MultiPlanet Marketing, Inc. - celebrating our 10th year!
pmiller@multiplanetmarketing.com
Certified Inbound Marketing Professional
If you have not thought about multi-planet marketing, you haven't considered all your marketing options.