Recently a friend of mine approached me to answer a few questions pertaining to social networking.  Joe Deleo was a member of the men’s rowing team with me at George Washington University.  Joe is now enrolled at the Media Management graduate program at Sryacuse University.  His task was to interview a number of small business owners to see how social networking makes their companies money and keeps them sustainable.

Below are the questions and answers:

Q: What is your current occupation, what are your responsibilities, and how do you define your role as a media expert?

A: I am the co-founder of vOfficeware Inc and head the web marketing division of the company.  My main responsibility is to find new business for my company through various channels of marketing.  I am a guest lecturer at NPSolutions.org; educating non profits about the power of social networking and am an active blogger and twitterer.

Q: How has your business/company dealt with the shift away from advertisements both online and in print? Another words in what ways have you had to change your strategy to effectively market to the consumer?

A:We have spent (wasted) thousands of dollars on “traditional” forms of advertising. Brochures, Google Adwords, newspaper ads and Flyers amounted to a total of $150 in sales and about $5000 in expenses over the past 2 years.

We have gotten 95% of our business out of referrals and word of mouth. We had to come up with a sustainable business strategy to leverage technology and our ability to network with people – our two main strengths.

Q: How have social media networks (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter) changed the way you reach the consumer? Please explain what approach or practices you employ.

A: Each week I write a blog article pertaining to a different area of web marketing. My blogging software automatically posts these articles to my twitter, facebook and su.pr account. These articles are often Re-Tweeted (RT) several times – boosting the number of hits my website receives. Interested people will post questions about my articles and I am able to respond to them (with everyone to see) – further increasing my visibility online. I have successfully increased my web traffic by 220% in the past 2 months using this approach.

Q: How has the Internet changed traditional mass mediums (television, newspaper, radio)? Do you see this as positive or negative?

A: The days of throwing your brand out to the general public and expecting sales are over. It is critical that you are able to connect with your potential customers on a personal basis. Twitter is the best tool out there to talk to your potential clients without coming across as “marketing” yourself. As long as you be yourself, don’t self promote yourself (too much) and let your sense of humor shine, twitter will be a god send to companies looking to get into the social networking arena.

The ball game has changed for mass media and I see this as a positive. Companies (big and small) need to be more creative in their marketing approach and step into social networking arenas. TV, radio and newspapers will either need to adapt or suffer from decreased revenues (if they have no seen it already).

Q: Do you see social networks as a trend or a permanent fixture in the ever changing landscape of online media?

A: Social networking will be here to stay in one form or another. It might not be called Facebook or Twitter – but finding organizations or niche groups to join will always be in demand.

I predict that the next social networking tool that takes mobile technology to the next level will be the next big thing in the industry.

Q: As the balance of power and control has shifted more to the individual user with the growing popularity of social media networks how has this impacted business?

A: Individuals are able to brand themselves as “experts” in their field with the use of social networking. Customers and clients are more comfortable (especially in the small business arena) dealing with highly decorated individuals as opposed to other small businesses who have a nice website.

In my business, I have successfully used blogging and twitter to position myself as an expert in the non profit arena for social networking and web marketing help. Without the use of these tools, I would have missed out on valuable contacts.

Q: How do you propose these social media networks (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter) can make a profit and do so without alienating their users?

A: I have used Facebook ads before for a start-up company and was happy with the results. Keeping the main service free is key to their success. Advertising seems to be the only logical choice for keeping them profitable.

Q: Do you believe that there is a window of opportunity that must be capitalized on soon (figuring out a way to make a profit soon) in terms of investors continuing to put money into social media networks or that they will continue to grow organically?

A: It seems like a new type of social networking site pops up every week. Most of these sites will never break even, however if you are able to find a niche group of people who can band together to network and share ideas, the sky is the limit. I look at ActiveRain as a perfect example of finding a niche and rewarding users for being active on the site.

Q: Social networks impacted the speed in which news and content must be processed online. How has this affected your business?

A: Press Releases seem to be of a formality now a days. Twitter, Facebook and blogging has allowed people to give out information as it is happening. People want information, and they want it as it’s happening.

My business does not have too many opportunities to take advantage of this but I advice non profits to use facebook and twitter exclusively for getting information about news and events out to the public.

Q: It can be argued that we lose out on the quality of content with the Internet due to the rush to be the first to report a breaking news story and get the information to the masses as quickly as possible. Do you believe this to be true? What other positives/negatives have you experienced as we shift further away from traditional mass mediums?

A: News organizations have been searching for ways to be first to break a story forever. These new tools allow information to be posted by anyone at any time. Going forward there does need to be some checks and balances in place with reputable news organizations to ensure that the information they are posting is indeed factually accurate.

July 16th 2009.  Sign up for the webinar here: http://www.npsolutions.org/whats_new.asp?WhatsNewID=66

vOfficeware will be the guest speaker for the various tools available to you to help manage your twitter account.  Some accounts that I find interesting:

http://su.pr/

URLs posted with Su.pr will allow you to share content with a wider audience and make it easy for other StumbleUpon members to discover your favorites.All you have to do is type your message, enter the URL of the site you’d like to share with your friends and followers, hit post and the message is posted along with the shortened URL. In addition to this simple syndication method, we provide you with tools to identify the best times to post, schedule future posts and see real-time results on clicks, tweets and traffic associated with your posts.

http://cotweet.com

Allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts and keep track of keywords of interest to your organization in real time.

http://twitterfon.net/

My favorite free iPhone application for twitter.

WordPress

The BEST blogging software out there.  Has many modules for autoposting blog articles to your su.pr, twitter and facebook accounts.

Methods for utilizing search engine optimization seem to evolve and change just when you seem to “have it”. We help our clients manage their search engine requirements by focusing on a few basic principles. These principles and tactics carry across the nonprofit and commercial sector.

There are two ways to drive leads and fundraising dollars to your website through search engines. Pay Per Click (PPC) and Organic search results. The most popular form of PPC is Google Adwords. “Organic” is when your page appears first in search engines without paying for advertising. This is the best way way (long term) to drive traffic to your website.

PPC Methodology

1. Keyword research: The basis of the entire campaign and therefore the most important part of your SEO strategy. The goal is to find keywords with high search volume and low advertising competition.
2. Ad Management: Create and edit ads for different groups and monitoring their performances
3. Weekly Analytics Reporting: By building weekly reports, you can visually see the results of the SEO campaign. Strategies for the remainder of the campaign are refined weekly based on these reports.

Organic Search Results Methodology

1. Keyword research: Similar to the PPC methodology, the goal is to find keywords with high search volume. These keywords will be the foundation of the content created on your website and blog articles.
2. Conversion rate and Return on Investment (ROI): Ranges from keyword strategy changes to Website content/design changes. In short it is about achieving and retaining the competitive edge.
3. Link Building Campaign: Start by researching your competition to see which sites they have partnered with. Find similar sites and blogs to see how you can partner up with them.
4. Directory Listings: The website URL will be submitted to related directories in your industry, boosting the number of incoming links.
5. Blog Marketing: Fresh, relevant and original content is a key aspect to boosting traffic to a website as well as to encourage repeat visits. We recommend dedicating 4 hours per week to write articles to be published on your website’s integrated blog. This content will enhance search engine visibility of your website as well as present an image of competence to your audience.