"How Are You Perceived?"

In today’s ever evolving cyber-space world, your business’ brand and reputation are more important than ever. Gone are the days of the Consumer pulling out the “Yellow Pages” and searching for a company to provide a service or product. In the good old days, Consumers would often buy from the company who they perceived as the “Biggest” and Best”. This selection process was very often driven by the simple process of buying the biggest Yellow Page ad your company could afford, positioning your company on one of the first pages of a particular service or product section in the Yellow Pages. I’m sure all of us know at least one person who sold Yellow Pages ads (and they made a lot of money doing it too!) This process was the first of many evolutions, leading to today’s practice of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is simply the process by which companies move their web sites to the first few pages of the various search engines like Google and Yahoo which are so widely used today. Do you know what is being said about your company, your employees, your customer service group or even the CEO? Brand awareness is a necessity in today’s market. You’ve worked hard to build your company’s reputation which is GREAT. But don’t stop there. Take the next step and bridge from your successful effort in building the brand and let’s bridge the gap between marketing and new sales. Do you know what your competition is doing? New sales campaigns or promos? Did they just hire a “heavy hitter” for their sales team? All of these items are extremely important to running a profitable and growing business. How do you keep on top of all this when you’re already working 12 hour days and can’t afford a full-time staff dedicated to monitoring your business? by using the tools available through Social Media…. Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin are just a few examples of how today’s sales force is developing the key business relationships which drive both company growth and profits. All through the use of Social Media. Social Strategy 1 has developed the technologies, hired the expert analysts, and has created the outsourced solution for this problem. By “Listening”, “Learning”, and ultimately “Engaging” the Consumer, the Social Strategy 1 solution will help focus your staff’s attention on what can impact business the most. To see a demo of the Social Strategy 1 dashboard technology and to get a free no obligation analysis of how using Social Media can affect your business, please contact me at dave@socialstrategy1.com or 781-937-0420

Social Media Continues to Evolve

According to today’s Yahoo Finance, http://tinyurl.com/2ewc9ya , a Google executive said the number of people connected to the World Wide Web will nearly triple in the next ten years. According to Nikesh Arora, president of global sales and business development at Google, Web consumers will rise to 5 billion by 2020, compared with about 1.8 billion today. "We're going to have a problem...it's going to be very hard to find the information that's relevant to us," Arora said, adding that the Internet will contain 53 zettabytes, or 53 sextillion pieces of information, at that point. "The distinction between the offline world and the online world will go away," Arora said. Because of this ongoing expansion of the internet, social media will continue to evolve into the next generation of consumer support. Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, You Tube, Yelp, Google, Linkedin, Zoom, and Jigsaw are just some examples of websites developed to increase the ease in which consumers can voice their opinions on today’s businesses. As more and more consumers begin using the internet, a need to stay on top of these types of consumer “tweets” is growing rapidly and those companies that embark on a process to address social media will flourish. Those companies ignoring it will be left behind. Social Strategy 1, a division of ILD Corp., has developed an outsource solution for business to follow their social media mentions and actually “engage” the consumer. Knowing how your company is being “tweeted” about is one thing. While a traditional search engine optimization (SEO) company can tell you how many times your company is mentioned and an online reputation management (ORM) company can help deal with the complaints, actually knowing how to make these mentions work for YOU it is another thing entirely. Knowing what to do about it requires a trained professional analyst with expertise in developing business plans to “listen” to the consumer, “learn” about the consumer’s’ needs and then “engage” the consumer, addressing both positive and negative comments. Don’t let dust settle on the information you receive from the internet. Put it to work to enhance your company. If you are interested in seeing how Social Strategy 1 can help your business with its social media needs, please contact me to set up a no obligation, risk free assessment of your business. I will include access to our on-line reporting dashboards, analyst recommendations and other pertinent components of the SS-1 solution. I can be reached at dave@socialstrategy1.com