Adding Social Media to your Direct Marketing Strategy

We've provided a lot of food for thought this week on the use of social media as part of your direct marketing strategy. It's probably quite apparent that we really got a lot of value for the time and money spent at the BlogWorldExpo. If any of the information that we've presented thus far resonates with you, we highly recommend taking part in this conference next year. You get a huge bang for your buck -- that's for certain.

To summarize, here are our key takeaways for your consideration:

• Creating a company blog allows you to demonstrate and discuss your core strengths to both your existing customers, as well as to potential prospects. And it allows them to effectively interact with you -- thus, allowing you to build stronger customer relationships.
  
• You can effectively build your customer base through building a community online. At the same time, you are also building the reputation of your business through an effective and thought-provoking blog.
• You can add to your profitability by effectively leveraging your blog and building your online community.
• Utilizing social media to create open and honest dialog with your online community will help to create credibility for your company. It also can establish you as the company with the expertise that serves a particular industry best.
• Social media is transparent -- so be aware of this. If your corporate culture isn't healthy, sooner or later this will come through loud and clear to your online community. On the other hand, if you have a healthy and positive corporate culture, this will also come through and will be of huge benefit. Through your online community, your customers will have a better chance of understanding what you are all about -- and this builds customer loyalty.
• Finally, use controversy but never use it to evoke anger. Your posts live forever! Don't write anything that you think that -- when calmer minds prevail -- you'll wish you hadn't.

We hope you've enjoyed this social media interlude this week. And, we hope that it will cause you to consider how you can begin to build social media into your marketing strategy. Again, we feel strongly that by embracing this direct marketing channel today, you'll be setting yourself up for success in the future. We already wish we'd begun a few years ago . . . so, keep that in mind.

As you begin to consider this, please let us know how it's going. We'd love to hear your comments of how you are creating success through your online community. And, as always, if you don't agree -- and think that this may be a passing trend, let us hear about that, too. We'll update you from time to time on how our strategy is helping us to build our business, in the hopes that we may be able to spark a Big Idea for you and your business.

TGIF!