Small Business Chamber – Memphis, TN

I repeated my recent lecture on ROI Marketing for Your Business:  Using Your Website to Drive Top-Line Growth last week, and I was thrilled with how many great questions I got at the end of the seminar.  Not only does that make it a better seminar for others, but it helps me understand what some of the more pressing questions are for the general public. I think I tend to get a little jaded since I deal with the concepts of Internet marketing and, more specifically, Social Media Marketing on a daily basis.

There is so much continued interest in social media, which I think is only fueled by the fact that it was recently revealed in a Nielson study that social neworking has overtaken email as a form of communication online. There are hundreds of millions of people that are flocking to these sites with zombie like single-mindedness with the intention of doing little more than… well, hanging out.

The important question that should be on your mind as a business owner or marketing professional is how can you tap into this enormous demographic? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer for that, and I don’t have time today to elaborate too much on the basics of a successful internet marketing strategy. The simple message is that you have to change the way that you’re thinking about marketing your business online because the way that people use the internet is changing.  Scratch that:  HOW people use the internet is changing.

People are not paying attention to the ads that they are constantly bombarded with through the thousands of media channels that are available.  Today’s consumer is not listening to one-way marketing messages like they were even 15 years ago.  Today’s consumer is empowered by the Internet because technology is on their side.  The new paradigm is that ATTENTION = ENGAGEMENT, so you have to find ways to engage your target audience.

If social media is simply a conversation taking place online, you need to find ways to get involved in that conversation.