Social Networking & Inbound Marketing

Social networking is a revolution.

The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication revolutions merge with new energy regimes. ~ Adam Smith (1723-1790)

Inbound Marketing is a revolution happening in social networking.

Right now. Today. This minute.

A revolution in the way people communicate with each other; in the way they find products and choose companies to do business with.

Inbound marketing is about getting found online, through search engines and on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter ~ social networking sites hundreds of millions of people use to find answers each day.

They can find you and your site, if you learn how.

Social networking is working

Now, almost everyone turns first to the Web, when researching anything from what’s the best ‘whatever’ to buy, to which marketing agency to hire for their business. First with Google or maybe another search engine, then we tap into our online network of friends, family members and colleagues via e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, Facebook, and Twitter.

The revolution is, these days, the companies who attract our attention are not the ones with biggest budgets and fancy TV ads. Now, we pay more attention to those with best Web content and a great online persona.

A great Web presence is absolutely critical for any business these days. And Inbound Marketing is at the forefront of this revolution.

The great thing about Inbound Marketing is that anyone can do it. Including you. In fact, especially you. It doesn’t require a lot of money, just an investment of your time and creativity.

With the revolution comes freedom!

You’re free from the injustice of marketing effectiveness being determined by the size of your wallet. Today, anyone with a story to tell can command an audience ~ and customers ~ on the Web. Your potential customers are already looking for products and services like yours on social networking sites, right now.

Free from the aggressive tactics of interrupting people’s daily lives to try to market to them. Rather than demanding a buyers’ attention with expensive ad campaigns, now we can publish engaging and useful information on the Web and deliver it exactly when people are interested.

People just land on our virtual doorstep wanting to buy what we’re selling.

This is a social enterprise marketing dream come true!

And now we’re free from the monopoly of mainstream media to get our information into the marketplace. Now we can tell our story directly using social networking and your blog. And the best part is, when you tell the story well, you’ll get found by people who are eager to do business with you, not the media.

Inbound marketing

Now marketing is fun!

When was the last time you got excited about buying yet another contact list of people you could try and interrupt? Never, right?

Inbound marketing is fun, and with it comes a more rewarding way to invest your time.

But as in every revolution, the rules have changed.

If you’re like me and you’ve grown up with the rules of traditional marketing, when there was no Google Adwords, social networking, Facebook or Twitter, then you’ve got to unlearn what you have already learned. You need to forget what worked in the past, in the off-line world, before the revolution. You need to pick up new skills.

You can’t simply apply the old rules to social networking. Those who try, all fail, without exception.

Fortunately, we’ve got Social Strategy and HubSpot to show us the way.

On these web pages, you’ll find marketing strategy and wisdom. But even more importantly, you’ll find hundreds of practical and accessible ideas, tools, and techniques that you can apply to your organisation right now. Social Strategy is written by me, and I know the realities of successful marketing, I’m no academic who talks up the latest theory.

What To Expect From Social Strategy

This website is going to be quite different than some of the other social media/marketing websites you may have found. I try to focus on direct-to-the-point information that is void of fluff and repetition. You can find it on a Friday, read it over the weekend, and by Monday you will have enough information you can begin thinking about how to build your social media marketing platform.

This website is going to tell you how to use Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and social networking. And all the usual things like you need to have a blog to be successful online. Its also going to show you how to break the rules, think different and realize your vision. In other words, I’m not going to feed you fish, I’m going to show you how to catch and cook your own.

I created this website because I think much of the advice being thrown about on blogs and Facebook can be damaging to a Social Enterprise, which is typically not brand oriented, and has much smaller and tightly controlled budgets.

There are a lot of ‘experts’, and so called ‘gurus’ out there, many with sites of their own, who give advice which seems so authentic and absolute, but in reality should only be used as a guideline.

I’ve seen many social entrepreneurs struggle to make this kind of advice work, but fail because it simply won’t work for them. Often, there are one or two steps they need to take before it can work. Steps which nobody discusses with them.

It’s not that the the advice they got is inherently wrong, it’s just that the advice is not personalized, and not focused on social enterprise. They understand ‘brands’, they don’t understand about social entrepreneurs, community ventures, the Third Sector and more-than-profit companies.

This website addresses those problems by getting you to think about YOUR audience, and create a plan around them. And I’m on hand to show you how to think differently, move away from the status quo, and unlearn the rules.

We’re not going to focus on numbers, we’re going to focus on people. The people behind the numbers.

So what are you waiting for?

Start reading Social Strategy and join the revolution, become liberated, forget the rules, have fun and get found by your customers!

And if you’re struggling, use the big orange FEEDBACK tab and let me know. Or post a comment below. I read them all.