Has Social Media negated the traditional Advertising Agency?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 16, 2012 -- Long ago to advertise you were faced with so many barriers that it seemed an impossible task to get your ideas out there. There were cost barriers, red tape and disconnect between what the agency interpreted as your idea with what you had in your mind.
Today it is as simple as ten minutes a day, shoot a tweet, update a facebook page, write an article a day, and work on your web 2.0 strategies all at minimum cost to your pocket and time.

The best advice to get your advertising off the ground whether you want to market your own product or someone else’s is to arm yourself with the basics.
• A good search engine optimization book (SEO).
• Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts;
• Exposure to sites like SEOMoz.com;
• Knowledge of wordpress.org, YouTube, Blogger.com, Squidoo.com and Weebly.com;
• Good content and;
• A working knowledge of the Google tools.

Let us go very briefly through each of the above and you’re on your way assuming of course you have your product or service and are ready for the next step.

1) A good SEO book – This gives you a snapshot of what you need to do to get information out there. It is almost like a good marketing plan already done for you, just follow the road map and reap the rewards. Sounds too good to be true? Try it and you will be pleasantly surprised. Just don’t get ripped off by those expensive SEO companies that profess to have the golden ticket to page rank and your lifelong success. Books like e-Boot Camp Book by Corey Perlman are a good start.
2) Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts - These are the main channels you can take advantage of to get your word out there. These fall under that umbrella of social media and are the frontrunners in the market. Social media allows you to bridge that gap between you and your current and potential customers. How to do it?

a. Facebook - It is as simple as opening a personal facebook account getting our friends on board and then opening additional pages under this main name and becoming “administrators” for those pages. Our products or services constitute those additional pages and facebook actually guides you through step by step how to open them. Then you simply refer your friends to these pages and they will see it is from you and they can “like” it. Your following will grow as their friends will see your offering and you’re on your way.
b. LinkedIn – For the really professional look LinkedIn is highly recommended. It puts you in touch with the crème de la crème market, allows you to follow relevant groups or companies and separates you from your competition. The classy profile you can open for your company in itself adds caliber to your product. Alternatively, you can have your own personal profile (versus your company) on LinkedIn and point your contacts to your website and gain traffic and customers that way as well.

c. Twitter – This is the best “on the move” platform out there. Start with learning what a hash-tag is and then you’re off. Associate yourself with people that share the same interests, businesses or conversations. There is an unwritten rule of thumb that “if you follow me I should follow you”.

3) Educate yourself at least once per week – There are so many ways to educate yourself for free out there that there is no excuse. Get on sites like SEOMoz.com and reap the benefits by listening to webinars. Learn from what the “google panda” is to new innovative ways to maximize your internet advertising presence. Also surf the web and see what the great successes are doing and form your strategies around that. Do not plagiarize but rather adopt the best practices. All the financial gurus preach to map our lives and mentor figures like Buffet and Gates and this strategy is not much different. Look at the format of the sites, the information they provide and how they please and deliver to their audiences.

4) Knowledge of Wordpress.org, YouTube, Blogger.com, Squidoo.com, and Weebly.com - Simply put, Wordpress.org has revolutionized the way everyday people can launch their own websites with minimal knowledge of technical knowledge. Additionally there are so many people out there helping you via youtube.com and on their own sites that it has become easy to learn. Additionally with tools like Blogger.com, Squidoo.com and Weebly.com is the art of blogging. This is an integral element of getting your message out there and supplementing your following. For example if your website is about Caribbean Holidays then have a blog or blogs that support its cause, find a following and get your message out there about what you have to offer.

5) Good content – Not by order of ranking, but this is critical to the success of anything you do on the web. Compare it to if you were offering pizza to the public, you want to make sure your customers are delighted at every point with your fresh ingredients, their experience at your place and the value they gain. In the same way, your website should be content rich and offer original quality information to your customers. Search engine sites for example increase the page ranks of websites by having programs like “web-crawlers” visit sites periodically checking for original content and mitigating against duplicate content. Make sure what you put out there is yours without compromise and you will not have a problem. If you are not skilled in writing your own content and cannot take the time to educate yourself, there are content writing companies out there that you can choose.

6) Google Tools – Face the facts, Google dominates the search engine world with more than 75% of traffic passing through their platforms. It is therefore wise to learn about the free tools they offer. You can utilize them to see what people are keying into searches, measure your web traffic, observe the clicks per page and bounce rates. Learn about Webmaster tools, Analytics, Keyword Tool and Ad-sense. It is all there and free to users, make sure and have your g-mail account in hand and you’re on your way. Also, make sure you have a Google+ account and sign up for your Google circles. It helps Google find your site, authenticate it and with good original content you are on your way. Make sure to update your site often with quality information for your customers as this helps Google boost your site up those page ranking.

So it is safe to conclude that the advertising world as we know it is a thing of the past. You can either get on board or look at the train chugging away. It is easy, affordable and not as time-consuming as you think. You can market anything from Natural Sleep Aids to call a plumber or taxi with the tools out there. Good luck and best of success to you. I invite you to visit our own website at http://www.caribbeaninsidersguide.com/ and track what tools we are utilizing to attract traffic and promote our offerings to the world.

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