In today’s wired world, engaging in social media is a powerful way to help increase your brand awareness and reach potential clients.  Just take a look at the recent results of surveys conducted by Nielsen Online:

• Over 67 percent of online users are engaging in “Member Communities”, which includes social networks and blogs, making it more popular than personal email.
• Twitter continues as the fastest growing social networking site, growing in popularity as not only a means of communication between friends, but as an essential part of brand marketing.
• While topping the charts for the number of unique visitors, Facebook also leads the way for stickiness, with the average user spending 3 hours and 16 minutes on the site. The average Twitter user sticks around for about 12 minutes.

Top 5 Social Networking Sites

It is evident in these results that social networking has become an essential part of today’s online experience.  At WeddingWire, we are committed to educating and connecting you with numerous social networks in order to extend your reach to today’s wired brides.

Facebook fan Page is a public profile you can create and personalize to showcase your business and services to Facebook users. With over 200 million registered users, creating a Facebook Page is one way to help reach your customers and potential clients. The best part is it’s completely free!

Creating a Page is easy. Simply visit Facebook Pages, click on “Create a Page” and let the fun begin.

• Step 1: Pick Category & Name
  Choose a category that best fits the services you provide. Please note that you will not be able to change your category once you choose, so pick the closest match. Next, choose a name for your Page. Since this Page is for your business, you should use your business name. This will help extend your brand awareness. Click “Create Page.”

• Step 2: Picture Time
  Click “Upload a Picture” at the top of your Page and upload a photo. A logo or a picture that represents your business is the best choice.

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LinkedIn has been beefing up their advertising platform to bring it more in line with Facebook recently and today on the LinkedIn Blog, they announced that their DirectAds advertising platform has been updated to include CPC (cost per click) ads. Previously, they were just offering impression based ad packages which isn’t ideal to small businesses with smaller marketing budgets.  Now that CPC ads are an option, why not try LinkedIn advertising. Many of you have tried Google Ads by now and some even Facebook ads. While LinkedIn doesn’t have the same user base and web traffic as either of those two sites (only about 37 million members), many will fall into the typical age range of engaged couples.  As the internet space becomes more crowded, branching out and trying different marketing avenues is a must.

When will Twitter release a CPC ad platform?

What is the foundation of social media? A simple question with multiple ways to respond, but I found a great post this morning that discusses the 5 C’s that make up the foundation of social media marketing.

• Conversation: Go where the conversations are taking place - Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, etc.  Establish accounts and create your identity.  Stay up-to-date with your accounts and participate often.  Really get to know your followers and audience so you can actively participate.

• Community: Seize the opportunity to not only join and participate in conversations, but add your own value.  This is how you create a community, which you must work to maintain and earn the trust of your followers. A good site for community building (in addition to the ones mentioned above) is Ning.  Ning allows its users to create their own social websites and social networks. It’s a good place to create a form or community around your product, which in return can produce useful user feedback.

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How do you generate new business? This is very good question to ask yourself.  Through surveys and discussions, we have found that a significant amount of vendors in the industry rely on referrals from their happy customers (”word of mouth”) and networking groups for business growth.  Relying solely on these two ways of generating new business can make it very challenging for vendors to sometimes predict and control business growth.  This is where the internet can play in.

I found a good post that highlights some key things to consider when looking to use the internet to get more referrals.  Here is a quick summary:

• Great product and service = happy customer. Word spreads fast online so having happy and satisfied customers will help your business (subscribing to your blog, connecting with you on LinkedIn, following you on Twitter, etc.). On the other hand, unhappy customers can easily cause harm to your online reputation. So make sure to maintain a high level of your product and service!

• Be committed! Your clients have to be willing to refer you, so you have to be committed to making sure they see success and are please with your product and service. To do this, you have to know your client and develop a level of understanding and trust. Look for ways to always maintain and improve this relationship to make sure expectations are being met.

• Give good reason. Find ways to connect with your clients online by engaging in inbound marketing – create good, educational content on your website (that is easy to understand), blog about yourself and your business, engage in social interaction with your clients (via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.). All of these ways will help you connect with your clients and in return give them a good reason to refer you.

So I turn the question over to you, how do you generate more business?  Share in the comments section!

Facebook reached a big milestone yesterday.  There are now 150 million people around the world actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using the site every day, according to a post on the official Facebook Blog yesterday.  Back in August 2008, the site hit 100 million active users, which means the number of active users has grown 50% in a matter of 4 months! And not to mention, the site is less than 5 years old.

What started off as a platform utilized mostly by college students, Facebook is now being used by people of all ages, including grandparents, parents, and children.  The site is also available in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories.

As mentioned in a previous post, Facebook can be used as great online resource to help you reach today’s wired brides!

New to Facebook?  Set up your free account today and get started!

Do you have any predictions on how the site will continue to evolve in 2009?  Share them in the comments section!

With the current state of our economy, many companies are turning their efforts to Inbound Marketing because it is a more efficient way to market their business than traditional, Outbound Marketing.

Let’s take a look at the difference between the two types:

• Outbound Marketing: Main goal is to find customers.
• Inbound Marketing: Main goal is getting found by customers.

So why are companies now using more Inbound Marketing tactics? Here are a few reasons I found:

• It costs less. Inbound Marketing is all about creating good content and talking about it. This can be done by starting a blog, creating a Facebook fan page, posting videos on YouTube, or using Twitter. All of these examples are free and can draw a significant amount of attention.
• Better targeting. With Inbound Marketing you can be more selective when choosing your audience instead of targeting the masses.
• It’s an investment, not an ongoing expense. If you invest money in creating content that puts you in the high rank of Google’s organic results (which is free), you will be there until someone else displaces you.

With the New Year only weeks away, it might be helpful to take a look at your own marketing plan and see if you can incorporate any of these Inbound Marketing tactics!

For more details on Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing, check out this great blog post from HubSpot.

Last week WeddingWire’s CEO, Timothy Chi, and CMO, Sonny Ganguly, joined many of you at the 5th annual Wedding MBA convention and presented on the best ways to reach today’s wired bride. You might remember them best as “Harold and Kumar”! So many of you asked to have “Sonny’s Top 10 Places to Surf ” that we thought we would just share with everyone:

1. MySpace - 71,486,821
• Build a profile for your business
• Browse through your network and connect
2. Facebook - 42,777,397
• Create a fan page for your business
• Build a wedding group or participate
3. Ning - 3,757,563
• Build your personal niche social network
4. WordPress - 134,875,738
• Create your blog and build incoming links
• Participate and comment on wedding blogs
5. Twitter - 1,723,476
• Create a following with your micro-blog
6. YouTube - 73,537,222
• Showcase your business with video content
7. Flickr - 22,511,915
• Create online photo albums and tag your pics
8. Digg - 21,632,429
• Build incoming links to the content on your site
9. Upcoming.Yahoo.com - 3,419,626
• Broadcast your events and the places you will be
10. Answers.Yahoo.com - 23,386,964
• Share your expert knowledge with brides-to-be

Share which of these you are currently using and feel free to post links to your pages with your comments!

Well maybe not all americans, but Cone Inc, a communications company, released the results of a survey they did of 1092 people earlier this month about their social media habits that I found on Search Engine Watch. The results of the survey indicate that 93% of the participants say that a company should have some sort of social media presence.  Additionally, 85% of the same group say that the same companies should be interacting with them on social media outlets.  Other findings include:

When asked about specific types of interactions, Americans believe:

• Companies should use social networks to solve my problems (43%)
• Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%)
• Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%)
• Companies should market to consumers (25%)

It’s an interesting study that supports the common notion that social media should be a part of your overall marketing plan.  Whether it’s a Facebook Fan page, a Myspace profile, a Flickr profile, or a company blog, customers today have many places to visit on the web today so being where they are is going to be key to attracting new business.

What social media avenues are you using to reach today’s brides?  What has or hasn’t worked?  What are your barriers to using social media if you don’t already?

WeddingWire's Fan Page

If you aren’t on Facebook yet, I might recommend doing so. Facebook just announced they have 80 million registered users on their site. Oh and while you’re there, stop by the WeddingWire Fan Page and become our fan! Fan pages and groups can be great social networking tools for your business.

As additional way to keeps users interested in your business using Facebook (and Myspace) is to put links in your sidebar.  We have those little boxes with our logo in them so be sure to do something unique to your business if you choose to follow a similar route.

How are you drawing attention to your social network page?  Leave a Thought with anything you’d like to share.