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Free Marketing

Digitalface

Digitalface

New Member
Hello all, and thank you to Tanya at TGES for the introduction.

As someone that delivers seminars on how to use Social Networking sites (social marketing) to promote businesses I thought it might be an idea to offer some free advice to those just starting out. My company Digital Face is a creative agency providing marketing campaigns and websites for large scale organisations (visit our site to get an idea: www.digitalface.co.uk)

Ok the free advice:
Essentially you want other people to find out about your company / product or service and then talk about it (promote it for you). Preferably at little or no cost. (I'll come back to your investment later).

With a little digging (research) you will find a number of blogs and forums in your location that will have relevance to your product or service. You join them and introduce yourself; every now and then adding a comment and building up a relationship (trust) with other people using the site.

Additionally you register on free directories (yell, thomsons, brownbook, city visitor...),you also create pages on twitter, myspace, youtube, bebo, facebook (they are all free). With these free pages you are leaving bread-crums of your product or service all over the net that will get you found - or at least talked about.

When people start to talk about your product or service you want them to talk about it in a positive light - unknown by you there will be someone out there talking about your business in a negative light (fear of the unknown, jealousy...),you need to keep protecting your investment by leaving a trail of positivity.

The next stage is creating your own blog page that offers background on you, your company and the opportunity to celebrate your successes, discuss your fears, promote your competitors (another thing not to shy away from) or partners - these are free to create: Typepad is as good as any.

The investment from your point of you for this technique (seeding) is time. Not cash.

This is a starting point and I could go on and on but hopefully you will see that marketing this way will create passionate evangelists who will talk about you and your product. Doing it this way will not make a quick buck or an instant return - this is for those in it for the long term.
 
Power Lunch Club

Power Lunch Club

New Member
Hello Colin,

It's great to welcome you here to SBF...

Folks I know Colin from attending some of our initial Power Lunch Club events...nice chap, give him a big SBF welcome.

Gordon
 
M

Marc Lyne

New Member
Hi Colin,

I could not agree more. Very sound advice.

The only thing that I would add is the need to keep updating the 'bread-crums' As a businesses owner, you need to keep updating and using these online tools, keep adding information reasonably regularly (at least every month). The reason being that the search engines really like regularly updated information, which means your details will rank higher.

If anyone has any feedback on adding their details to Brownbook, collecting testimonials, using Brownbook widgets on other sites..., then please do email me, happy to help.

marc[AT]brownbook[DOT]net

Thanks.

Marc.
 
Gordon N

Gordon N

New Member
Welcome Colin, I look forward to any other free advice you might treat us all to in the future! :) Enjoy SBF...

Regards,

Gordon
 
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