Do Blogs and Social Media Marketing work?
Recently I had a discussion with a colleague about how blogs & social media help customers communicate with companies without picking up a phone. He was concerned with actually losing business due to the fact that people would not call the company directly, or would figure out what needed to be done by gathering information from social media services. Blogs, as far as he was concerned, give away information and take away the conversation via a phone call. So in response to this I gathered some information from the internet on how companies are actually leveraging social media conversations to increase business. Now of course there have been examples on how “not” to use these services but as with any new business tool there will be mistakes. Hopefully you will find this information useful and allow us to help your company leverage social media & affiliate marketing for your business.
Blogs being used to share information: Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines, Amazon Web Services, Coca-Cola (just to name a few)
Below is an image showing the monthly traffic that these blogs capture, and you’ll notice the domain name of Coca-Cola’s Conversations blog.
Whether or not these blogs create a phone call is not the point. The point is that companies are engaging customers/visitors about things going on in the community. With social media a company can create its own community on the internet very easily. Look at how Comcast, DELL on Twitter & Facebook, and Saturn have leveraged social media to put millions of dollars into their own pockets. More importantly is the fact that by using social media services (ie. twitter, facebook, blogs, etc.) , you can track where customers are gathering and how it is increasing revenue. Taking it even further beyond blogs, McDonalds utilizes podcasting to educate customers regularly. Starbucks launched a new social media based site to drive customer conversations on their site as well and it averages 23K visitors each month. Whole Foods has over 200,000 customers following them on twitter who can engage in conversation with the food giant at anytime.
Sure these companies are larger than most, but these ideas can be put into practice regardless of your company size. With adding these features to your current affiliate marketing strategy you ensure that your brand, product, or service is visible all over the internet.
