Marketing WilesUsing Wiles to Market Your Brand

In between working hard and hardly working, I came across an online advertisement for social media education for businesses.  Being a lover of social media, I happily clicked on it to learn more.  I found that it was a basic overview of how to sign-up and set-up some of the top social media platforms for your business.  “Nothing wrong with teaching that,” I thought, until I saw that there was a decently sized fee for this information.  Come on, marketers!  We are now charging to teach people the basics of how to sign up for a Twitter account and learn how to add followers?  If anything, the basics should be offered free so marketers can get their foot in the door and then charge for suggested strategies and business recommendations.

Now, I am sure I am down playing this information and these marketers probably have plenty of useful things to offer their paying customers (like their additional paid services), but I wanted to write this blog to promote the number of free resources on the web today that teach the basics of the biggest social mediums.  Below are summaries and links to reputable and up-to-date articles, blogs, etc. (none outside of 2009) that will get you on your way to understanding the most popular social networking tools and how you can use them in your business.

Take the hour of time you would have spent on these paid services and instead read these articles.  Then, once you have mastered the basics and you are still having issues, you can justify paying for additional information on these platforms. (Well, unless you wanted to use the paid service for a business write-off.  Nothing wrong with that.)

Twitter is one of the most baffling social mediums available today.  You can read article after article about how everyone is trying to work and harness the power of Twitter and it’s massive group of followers, but HubSpot - Twitter, to me, offers the most basic understanding of how it works and how businesses have successfully put it to work in building profits.  Hubspot offers a number of free and interesting articles and e-books such as:

• How to Use Twitter for Business: A Beginner’s Guide
• Why Twitter shouldn’t creep you out: An evaluation of Twitter culture and relationship building
• How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR
• State of the Twittersphere - Q4 2008 Report
• Twitter Grader - Awesome tool Hubspot provides to help you evaluate your Twitter influence (and that of your competition).  All you need to do is input your Twitter username and it computes the rest.

And if that isn’t enough help, Twitter already has a well thought out help page.  Who would have guessed??

More Useful Twitter Articles:

• HOW TO: Auto-Follow People on Twitter
• HOW TO: Quiet the Twitter Noise

If you or your business doesn’t already have a Facebook (FB) page, which I am not even sure is possible since there is currently over 2 billion FB pages, then you should definitely consider jumping on the bandwagon.  Once again, Hubspot - Facebook has a number of references to help your business succeed on this platform.  Just a sample of the library of their articles, webinars, and e-books include:

• Using Facebook for Business
• What You Get From Facebook Pages: Default Information
• Now, Any Business Can Tap 53 Million Facebook Users (For Free)
• Facebook grader - Like their Twitter grader, they also offer a Facebook grader to help you make the best page possible.

More Useful Facebook Articles:

• HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
• 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

Let’s face it, YouTube is huge and I am not just talking about the billion viewers it gets each and every DAY (yes, day).  I am taking about the huge potential it has for businesses looking to manage and cut costs (on all levels - web hosting, PR, marketing) all while reaching a huge number of people.  The service is free and easily integrated into any company’s existing business model.

Useful YouTube Articles:

• 34 Ways to Use YouTube for Business
• HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on YouTube
• HOW TO: Customize Your YouTube Channel

Linkedin is the professional version of Facebook and is used by some as an online portfolio of professional accomplishments.  While Linkedin is aimed more at individuals, consultants, and freelancers, businesses can also utilize it to expand their network, recruit new employees and brand their company.

Useful Linkedin Articles:

• HOW TO: Build Your Company’s Profile on LinkedIn
• Ways to Use Linkedin for Business
• How to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn
• HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

What other social networks are your businesses using successfully?  How did you implement them and what resources could you recommend to help other businesses learn to utilize them?

Tags: marketing, social media, web media