The Social Media Marketer

Social Media Platform: How You Can Market Like the Big Boys

Have you always wanted to be like one of the big movers and shakers in industry?   Well, we may never be as wealthy as that, but we sure can market our websites and products like they do!

According to a recent study done by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, large numbers of Inc. 500 companies are turning to the Internet and developing a social media platform when looking for effective ways of marketing their products and companies.

It's not only because of the sudden popularity of Twitter, or the way we're all "friending" each other and making fan pages. The majority of large companies are using the old-fashioned message boards predominantly to get their message out.

It stands to reason. After all, you can put yourself out there on Twitter, Digg, Facebook or any one of the hundreds of sites out there dedicated to getting us all following each other.  They're effective sites, and industry is also heading to them in overwhelming numbers. However, the message board will market your site or product directly to the people who will use them.

For example, let's say you've built a website about making and selling healthy dog treats. Yes, you can tweet about the dog treats and maybe get a few people to notice you.  However, big businesses know it's more effective to aim their products not at everyone, but the people who are most likely to use them. If you go onto a message board about dog care, you can steer the topics of conversation to healthy dog treats -- and let people know they can buy those treats from your website.

Don't spam the sites, because you'll just get banned. However, if you include message boards as part of your social media platform, you'll be right in there with the people who will care about your product.

Many large companies are rapidly turning their efforts, however, to social networking sites, and doing quite well with them. But to emulate them, you'll need to understand their marketing procedures.  On Facebook, users can create fan pages to attract the people who will most likely use their site. They make you buy an advertisement for that page, but they do not stop you from going onto Facebook pages and recruiting fans.

The University of Massachusetts study found that companies are also using online video, blogging, wikis and podcasting, in that order, to market themselves.  A social media platform that includes all of those items will be the most successful, and large companies use them all.

But do you have the time to do that?  If you're like most people, you don't. That's why it 's important to pick and choose the methods that will benefit you most.

So be smart and be like the big boys. Using as many different formats in social media as you can to get your message out there will only lead to your name being better known.