HomeStars – News and Updates

Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? MySpace? You’ve heard about them – Are they important for marketing your business?

We just hosted an event Thursday June 11, with a presentation by Mark Evans on social media. Mark is an experienced consultant in his field.

Here’s a brief summary of his talk.

What is social media? It is a form of marketing where you have a 2 way conversation with your customers online, such as sharing content, posting events, and building a like minded community. There are hundreds of free sites to available to use, and the challenge is finding which to use. The good news is that there only a handful of good ones: youtube, linkedin, flickr, facebook, my space, twitter, word press, blogger,

delicious and digg are way up there in capabilities and widespread adoption.  

Benefits of social media are high according to an e-marketer study – but the main benefit for businesses is the ability to engage with your existing customers in a meaningful, and relevant way. Top tools Mark discussed are;

1. Blogs: Are still the strongest and most effective way to communicate to your customers on a daily basis and share your knowledge. The dowsside is that they do take time and commitment to maintain. You should be posting a good quality article at least once a week, and if you can’t write, you should find someone that does in your company. There are lots of good / free blogging platforms available, and the most common are wordpress.com and blogger.com 

2. Twitter: is a micro blog, where you can add posts or tweets that are up to 140 characters. So in basically about 10 words, you can share ideas, new products, events, sales daily. Dell has 80 twitter accounts and is using twitter daily to keep sales and offers top of mind. There are 30 million people using twitter right now and it’s easy to use. You can also monitor conversations in your industry by using a search tool about specific keywords. It’s a great way to provide additional customer service, answering questions and staying engaged in conversations specific to your business.

3. Facebook: The fastest growing demographic registering on facebook is 35 – 49 years old. There are 250 million people on facebook and it’s another way to engage in people (especially locally) that are interested in renovations on their home. They also have a ‘company’ page you can create – versus a personal profile page. See Starbuck’s page, or HomeStars for examples. On a company page you can provide news, new product announcements, add photos, video and allow people to become ‘fans’. Now they have facebook connect which will allow people to sign up to your own newsletter using their facebook password. So first step, sign up and get a company facebook page, and next step look at whether facebook connect can be used for people registering to your site.

Case Study: Argentinian wine called Fuzion, sells for $7.49 at the LCBO and has now sold more than >100k cases here already. They did no advertising or sampling but built online buzz and awareness on social media sites. Fuzion drove their message of a great tasting, great value wine through their fans on facebook and twitter.

Harnessing word of mouth recommendations is the most powerful tool you can have to get people talking about your product and service. More than 60% of people are influenced in their decisions by other people’s opinions. So sites that allow your customer to write about your company are your best way of staying top of mind and relevant to your audience.

Mark Evan’s last message – There’s no downside to trying some of these social media tools. There’s no cost to you. The downside of NOT doing it could be greater – as your competitors get on board.

Mark Evans can be reached at
ME Consulting, Digital marketing, Communications and Social media
markevans.ca
email: mark@markevans.ca
phone: 416-669-7028
twitter: @markevans

Posted by NancyP