Get hip to social media or lose customers - Jacksonville Business Journal:

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Having an informative Web siteor blog, especiall y one with interesting or useful videos, makews one’s business more likely to be found not only in a Googlwe search, but also on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, even via Twitter. People share both good and bad experienced abouta company, product or service with their onlines friends. And if their friends ask for a they share thatas well. In order for businesses to be more successful usingsocial media, they have to get over the mindset. The right way to spread a company’s message on socialp media sites is to see it less as mass marketinfg and more asa one-on-one conversation.
“Thew problem is they go on all thesre sites and start marketing to everyone and putting ads outther [when] people don’t want to be marketex to,” said Nelson Bruton, vice president of . “You must make your message relevantto them. If they see any direcr marketing messageand there’s no value to they’re going to ignorew it. They may even delete you as a friend. “Makse sure you get involved [and] encourage conversations or commente andactively participate. Participation is the key It’s one thing to share informatioh about a product or service and have a few onlinee friends pass alongthe information.
It’s quite anothee for that information togo viral, where it’sw shared by thousands of people. “Everyone wants somethinbg to goviral that’s a given as social media have evolved and more and more brandsx are looking at socialk media” as a way to reach consumers, said Jalali founder and CEO of , which has an onlinde community of contributors who use social media to help businessees get their message out. Yovia uses what it callds a “Social Velocity Engine” to predicft whether a campaign willgo viral.
“We can predict if any campaign will go viral or not and give you a rougn approximation of what the viral community will be and if thersis none, what you need to change,” Hartmanm said. “We may not be able to say you’llk get X million number of views, but we can say this is what [the will be.” Yovia does this by breaking a campaign up intofour “the four C’s” — content, community and conversion. “The best kind of content is something the person wrote Hartman said. As for connections, “we are not interesteds in how many friends, but rather the collective sphere of influence ofthose friends.
“Communitg is a measure of discussion. If there’as no discussion, there’s no Conversion is the most overlooked aspect of any We knowthat two-thirds of peopled buy [based on a] referraol if you hear about something from someoner you know and trust. Your peers tell you what’sa important. [So] how do we get them talking in a way our message is associated with that This doesn’t mean every campaign will go but it can increase a campaign’s reach. “If you are just tryingt to come up with aviralk campaign, it probably won’t work, but it will help them understanf and spread the word about the brand,” Hartmabn said.
“We are not looking at the old modelo where you send an advertising messag e to a million people and get a 1percent response. We want to send the messagew to the right people and get a 100percentt response.” Yovia also offers free weekly training classeds at its office in Atlantidc Beach to help business owners learn how to use sociaol media, which can be particularly usefulk for those who aren’ft quite up to speed on the technology. “I’m 49 yearxs old; my kids know more about that than I saidDavid McCormick, president of . “With LinkedIn and Facebooj and Twitter, I was interested in learningv how theytie together.
Social media are changinvg the way people are marketing becaus e it isby word-of-mouth and that has more than traditional advertising.