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Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

B2B Social Marketing on the rise

"In America, you have the watches, but time. In Nairobi, we have the time, but not seen."

That is a familiar quote I heard recently of "Evans", an international student from Kenya who is currently enrolled in the School of Business at Dartmouth Tuck College. He made me think about the economics of marketing in the U.S., and how the proliferation of social networks influenced the consumption of media and participation of business users. Although once thought rare in this context, the rise of social marketing is rooted in economic principles commodities. When the price is "zero", the laws of supply and demand are often ignored, but still relevant. Do not forget another appointment familiar: "There no free lunch "

Back to Basics-The economics of "free"

Remember those days of student waking from a nap in the afternoon sitting in a conference room, dazed and confused by a large number of curves of supply and demand exacerbated by the explanations of the elasticity and marginal utility? Well, all this is still the basis for today's business behavior and will remain the basic principles of free market economy. While may have been a campaign on the "chocolate rain maker" (YouTube celebrities) and "stop smoking twitters" (referring to the retention rate) Basic economic principles remain essential to understanding current trends in social marketing in business today. A couple of changes the traditional variables can help explain the logic to support increased marketing "freeconomics". That's how it works in a free market.

The traditional laws of supply and demand of the state that prices rose are the result of decreased supply and / or increased demand, the opposite is true. For example, with all other factors remain constant, in general, can expect to negotiate lower title = "Mailing Lists"> mailing list prices when there is more supply lists on the market and / or a decrease in demand for rental of the list. This principle is based on macroeconomic perfect competition, so do not anticipate events and hope to negotiate a 50 percent net of available names in a very Specifically, the list of 5,000 names niche response.

Putting the model of traditional industry list to one side, how they relate to the theory macroeconomic social marketing when the price of these services is "zero"? First of all remember, there is no free lunch. The price variable simply be replaced by the opportunity cost of time, which in itself can have a wide range depending on who is most involved in the process. Within the context macroeconomic "price", the opportunity cost of time in general will be less than the supply of time is increased due to factors such as unemployment or the ability idle. This makes working on "price" more attractive and increasing demand for services that enable companies to leverage the resources, it goes without saying there are a lot of independent consultants out there trying to state of the blogosphere.

Explicitly, the economic crisis led to an increase in labor supply and a decrease in marketing budgets average. Therefore, companies and individuals are challenged once again delivering more for less. Social networks, bookmarking services, free business advertising and affiliate programs more attractive when we have less "watches" and more time. Providers of these services, mostly in the form of online application services providers, benefit from free labor and exploit the assets resulting (content) solutions as a platform for contextual targeting advertising and other innovative delivery systems for the messages used to stimulate demand and increase revenue.

Moreover, the implications for search engine optimization (SEO) to extend the value proposition to include to get noticed for more positions in the search page results (SERPs). Bookmarking services provide external links can be annotated using search algorithms to increase the ranking of a particular website Google and other major search engines. This is a key benefit for marketers who have embraced the digital revolution, but still not as easy to measure the ROI. Despite claims that the search may be dominated by ranking the priority domains for the placement of external links, an effective long-term strategy term we must recognize that the SEO is a moving target, especially as personalized SERPs continue to evolve and take root. If that does not feel out of control, then add the fact that there are hundreds of social marketing sites which are not all equal.

This brings us to return to the fundamentals of direct marketing and definition your target market. The following media summary will help you filter what makes the most sense for your business. Note that the target groups within social networking (eg LinkedIn) can be as important to the network (s) you choose.

Adopting an approach to social media.

It would be a hand gun safety instructor a blindfold on and taken to the Bronx Zoo? Of course not, but why are we so arrogant about just social marketing, and it's free? Again, there is no free lunch, so to assess the opportunity cost of time and not to address a public wrong or could have negative consequences for your brand. There is nothing wrong with a shotgun approach when skeet (moving targets such as search algorithms) and the same is true for connecting to your target market. Here is a list of resources you can use to reach your market with social media. Never is too late to start.

Free Social Media for Business Resources (Top 100)

Aggregation Tools (5): Bloglines, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm, Lijit, YouBundle

Blogs (7): Blog.com, Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr Posterous, Typepad, WordPress

Blog directories (10): Blogapedia, Blogarama, BlogCatalog, Blogdirs, Blog Flux, Bloghub, Showing Blogs, Blogtoplist, BritBlog, Technorati

Bookmarks (12): Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Fark, Mixx, MyBlogLog, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz

Comment Systems (2): Disqus, IntenseDebate

Free Directory listings (25): Akama, Bateekh, BizHWY, cardboard, CrunchBase, DMOZ, EVliving, GetFreeListing, Google Local, IllumiRate, Jayde, Jigsaw, Library Index Internet Web Directory Little, Manta, MerchantCircle, NextMarker, Directory of simple, radios, SuperPages, turnpike, profiles VentureBeat, WebBuyersGuide, Internet, Local Yahoo!

Name Checks (2): Namechk, Usernamecheck

Later documents (3): eHow, Google Docs, Scribd

The subsequent presentations (3): authorSTREAM, MyPlick, Slideshare

Video Post (2): Vimeo, YouTube

Press Releases (4): i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, PRLog.org

Publish Articles (5): ArticleDashboard, ArticlesBase factory items, Ezinearticles, Ideamarketers

Social Networking (8): Biznik, Crowdvine, Facebook, LinkedIn, Naymz, Ning, NowPublic, Plaxo

Twitter Tools (5): Grader, ping, TweetDeck, TweetLater, Twitter

URL shortening (4): bit.ly, doiop, memurl, TinyURL

Wikis (3): Pbwiki, Wetpaint, Wikipedia

Here are three tips to help you choose the right services for your business.

Tip 1: Since PageRank is important for exhibition in the Google search engine results page (SERP), you may want to check out the page rank for each these services. What can be done free of charge in line with the PageRank checker (higher is better).

Tip 2: add your blog directories can improve your search rankings and exposure, and the same is true for your website and your business. That is the reason for the inclusion of 35 directory listings (25 directory listings free blog directories + 10) in the top 100. Only need to do it once, so take advantage of them.

Tip 3: Beware of URL shortening service you use, as it may affect the future of search rankings. Not all of the shortening of URLs are created equal, and there is a surprising number of issues to consider when choosing one of these services. We could certainly roll your own to have total control, but there are plenty of good commercial solutions available free. Just be careful to avoid services that point to your Web site to your site on the packaging, since its Web site to steal fuel from the external links devalue its analysis and generally undermine their business. A best practice is to choose a service that uses a 301 redirect, which indicates that the short reference URL Link moved to address long as the permanent address of your website. By contrast, a 302 redirect tells the search engine that your destination is temporary, and the service provider can then take credit (results SEO) for the link, that's bad.

About the Author

Chris DeMartine is Director of Business Development at NextMark. He holds an MBA from the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University, and has written several article related to digital marketing, market trends and analytics.

LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdemartine
Marketing Blog: http://blog.nextmark.com
Mailing Lists Search Tool: http://lists.nextmark.com

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