My first involvement in social media came my Sophomore year of college when I finally joined Facebook, although I was skeptical the year before, calling the network “stalker net.” It was around this time that Facebook was growing rapidly, becoming an extremely effective way for college students to meet eachother while at university, and keep in touch upon graduation.
That was in 2005. Facebook has come a long way since then- becoming a vital social marketing tool for many companies, along with many other social media mediums. I’ve put together a list of some social media tools and how they can be used for marketing purposes. Enjoy!
Facebook:
Where it all started (for me). Start your own group and begin building members. Create your own company and begin gaining fans to notify of your new products or services. Create an application that is fun, functional, and advertises your brand. Or, if you are your own brand, create your own profile and begin adding your friends, and networking with potential clients.
For more information on Facebook Marketing, be sure to check out “I’m on Facebook– Now What,” a book that’s on my reading list, written by Jason Alba and Jesse Stay. This book explains the different parts of Facebook and how to get the most out of Facebook. It helps you learn how to use Facebook to further your career, business, or job.
Blogging:
There are endless marketing possibilities in blogging, so long as you play by the rules. Blogging is essentially your own publication- you are free to market yourself as often as you would like. The key is to maintain a balance between relevant quality content for your visitors and marketing yourself. Remember that the content you provide will help to add to your reputation and build you up as a thought leader and expert in your field. Blogs also give you the forum necessary to address and clear up any controversy or attacks on your company.
Podcasting or Videocasting:
Provide your viewers / listeners with some useful information and content, once again building yourself or your company as the expert in your field. You can also feature some new or popular products either as a podcasting series (if it’s interesting enough), or as a feature in each episode.
RSS Feeds:
Get creative! Some think that RSS feeds can only be applied to your blog- updating your regular readers when there is a new post. RSS feeds can reach much further than that- think of adding a feed to your product page to notify customers of new products or services being offered. Or use RSS feeds to deliver your email newsletters to those that wish to receive the content in a reader. Offering a choice will greatly increase the perceived value of you and your brand.
Twitter:
Several companies have began to use Twitter’s 140 available characters in each ‘tweet’ to market their brands and companies, as well as reach their customers on a more personal level. Twitter can be used to inform “fans” or followers of upcoming products, special events or promotions, addressing controversy or bad publicity, and any other company announcements. For more information on how to use Twitter to better market yourself, visit the PandemicBlog post Twitter Marketing by
So, how do you use social media to market your company, its products, or yourself? Please share with us!
This post was written as an entry in An Island Life‘s first ever group writing project.
eMarketing & New Media 
I agree with all of these (although I’ve been sick of Twitter and haven’t used it for awhile because of being down). I’ve really been excited lately about Podcasting and how it can help promote your business in a new way. Thanks for the information for people interested in Social Media techniques that really work.
I remember Facebook coming out and being completely baffled by it… now I sometimes find myself spending hours there at a time…
Great post – very informative!
Thanks for the info! I LOVE facebook because it’s connected my family, my high school classmates, and a host of other groups like I never imagined possible. Not sold on Twitter yet, though.
Our company is trying to explore the different possibilities for using social media for marketing purposes.
The first step we took was to educate the department heads as to the basic workings of LinkedIn Answers and Twitter.
Our second step will be to see if anyone in our industry is using these technologies so that we can join in on the conversations.
If it turns out there is a significant amount of our lenders, partners, or borrowers using these networks then we will train an individual in each department to manage these conversations.
The worst thing that can happen is that our industry hasn’t adopted these tools yet and our company is educated to take action for when they do.
Great pic with the Nittany Lion!
Just shot you a Facebook friend request and am Following you on Twitter.
Both Twitter and Facebook is mostly “Early Adopters”… marketing,tech types etc. Great place to network with fellow marketers and marketing thought leaders.
Podcasts and Videocasting along with targeted RSS gives regular brick and mortar businesses opportunities to tell their story. Plus syndication of video online is a great way to drive traffic to the businesses site.
I use some bookmarky’s like technorati, entrecard, stumble, diggit, rss, feedburner, and twitter.. I’m starting to gain some extra traffic, but its all fun!
I’ve built a blog that is devoid of the usual “This is me and this is why you want to read what I have to say” (except for the bio page). Instead I’m researching and writing about what VISITORS want to read, multiple topics. I have to say the instant response has been PHENOMENAL! The downside, I’m not promoting me or my brand. The upside, the site is a hit and I almost can’t keep up, my server gets thrashed daily.
I think Twitter will die a horrible death (figure of speech) if everyone on it is promoting nothing but themselves… there really IS a huge demand for promoting other topics of interest. I stopped using twitter when I could no longer stomach the “look at me” tweets every few minutes.
Thanks for the shout-out about our book. I find it fascinating to hear about people like you who got onto Facebook in school, for purely social reasons, and then restrategize to make it a professional tool.
– jason
Twitter stepped in and took over the real-time information aspect of social media, something that even news websites had failed to execute. The witnesses and participants of events were now ‘tweeting’ their experiences as they were happening, giving audiences with pure insight and uncensored content. Although Twitter feels like a lose end waiting to be tied, its remarkably exponential world-wide increase will sustain its community and – more significantly – create a connection among audiences that neither Facebook nor any other media can come close to achieve.
Hi great readiing your post