Social networking has quickly become the newest hot topic in the marketing arena. Social networking sites have become so popular that new words like “friending” have formed since the explosion of Myspace, Facebook and Twitter 5 years ago. Facebook now has well over 350 million users and Twitter has roughly 5 million users (Data for twitter was estimated based on user id numbers assigned since Twitter has not made this information public.) I will have to admit that I am now, also, a Facebook user. After 5 years of resisting the movement, I jumped on the bandwagon because of the implications on my business. Social network marketing is a craze that has begun to spread on the internet. Fan pages have been developed on Facebook for businesses and soon businesses will be able to create regular Facebook accounts. (Facebook has posted this on their web site for the last 3 months.)
I resisted the movement for a long time because I do not like people knowing much about my private life. However, after researching the benefits of Facebook and the privacy restrictions that were default to all Facebook accounts, I decided to create an account for myself and my business. It allows me to post my thoughts, my comments, and business activity for the benefit of my “friends” in the Facebook world. My posts and profile information are only visible to my friends so I can choose what I share with friends and what I share with the rest of the Facebook community. But this has all changed recently, Facebook has changed the default settings for user accounts. Items that were once private are now set to be public. This means that your information, pictures and comments are now public. Of course, these settings can be changed by the user at any time. In fact, Facebook has given its users more control on the privacy of all of your information on Facebook. As a user, you now can control if your friends, friends of friends, or public see your comments, pictures, or profile information.
Social networking has become the latest and greatest item on the internet. Businesses can use these sites as a marketing tool. Individuals can use the site to reconnect with people that they lost touch with. All of this is wonderful and fun, but be aware of the privacy control of those sites and your user account settings. Comments, pictures and profile information that you would not want your current employer, future employer, or business contacts to see should not be posted onto your account if your default privacy setting is public.
There is no doubt that our economy has shrunk, however, there seems to be arguments on both sides as to how well our economy is now doing. Marketing and advertising are widely affected by the shrinking or growing of our economy, so I keep up with current news in our economy and with the world economy. Currently, the argument is whether or not the economy is turning around and is on an upswing. Keep in mind that unemployment has risen to 10.2% and may increase again next month. The average consumer spending has risen, but how much of that was demand borrowed forward from the first half of 2010? Is our economy recovering and will it recover to the levels we had in 2006? These questions still have yet to be answered, without a doubt.
What significance does our economy have on marketing and advertising? Well, as most marketing and advertising firms already know, these budgets are the first to be cut and the last to be added. Most companies see advertising as a luxury item instead of a necessity, so they are willing to cut those costs in order to keep other parts of their company operating.
It would be wise for companies to keep spending money in advertising and marketing during these times. People buy goods and services based on their ability to recall from their memory the name of a company who sells that particular good or service. In order for a person to recall that company, the consumer has to be exposed to that company repetitively. Many self improvement trainers will teach people to repeat the name of a person repetitively as you speak to that person in order to recall the name from memory at a later date. The same principle applies in advertising. Companies need to present themselves to consumers 9 times to be remembered once. In order for that company name to become part of their vocabulary, they need to have 5 to 7 causes to remember the company. That means you need to have 45 to 63 impressions on a consumer. One of the ways to make these impressions on consumers is advertising.
A company with a healthy advertising budget during bad economic times can make significantly more impressions on consumers than they did before the recession with the same amount of money. Why? The competition is spending less on advertising therefore making less impressions. The bottom line is that when the economy does grow and consumer spending does increase, a smart company will be well ahead of their competitor.
Our web site has been online for a little over 2 weeks. We have been making modifications on a regular basis and more modification are scheduled for this week. One major modification has been the syndication of creative news into our blog area. We have put up a few syndicated news feeds but we still have plenty more to plug in so we can keep feeding news and tutorials on a timely basis. If anyone out there knows of a good creative news sources, please let us know so that we can add it to our feed. Other update news, we are still working on our client area. Hopefully, we can have this part of our site up soon for our clients.
Finally, We have our new site up. It is by far not complete. As you look around the site you will notice pages that are not quite complete and pages that need more content. We also have pages that are in the works. These future improvements will happen on a regular basis. You may find something new everyday, I highly doubt that but you never know. A more accurate timeline would be that you will find something on this site every week.
Somethings that are planned for the future. A staff page so that people begin to recognize that the awesome work that comes out of CMS is more than just me. Believe me, I do enjoy hard work but I couldn’t do it all by myself. Clients should enjoy a new version of our client pages. Hopefully, the new area will make it easier to re-order and download essential files. Don’t forget to call us every once in a while. We do enjoy hearing from our clients. We also hope visitors will use our blog area to check out some tutorials and creative news.
Check back often for updates and new items. Enjoy the new look and if you have any comments, please leave them.
