Spinfield – SEO & Internet Marketing Blog

In the beginning the internet was a a high tech way for geeks to discuss geek stuff.  In just a few short years it has evolved into the all encompassing format for multimedia communication it is today. And it keeps on evolving.

Of course it’s old news that social media has forever changed the internet.  Aside from my wife, who vows to go to her grave without one, everyone I know has a Facebook page.  Recently even my 70 year old my mother friended me, and now I’m getting friend requests from her friends, which is a little disturbing. You’d understand if you knew my mother’s friends.

Today you can Digg your favorites, Stumbleupon a great article, find it on Technorati, keep yourself Linkedin, show your moves on YouTube, tweet about it to your hearts content, and it’s all quite Del.icio.us.

Forgive me for the last line, I couldn’t resist.

It goes without saying that everyone is doing it.  If you are not using social media to reach your customers you are missing the party.

But many business owners might think that their boring industry would not work on social media sites.  After all, how can you make something like soap, or insulation, or whatever boring product you offer interesting?

Well you’re not alone.  I just read this great post on on SEO.com.  Nathan Blair, the author, correctly points out what social marketing is really all about: emotion and branding.  You don’t want to offer up a bunch of dry facts about your product.  You want to have fun with it.

As an example, Nathan points to this fantastic YouTube campaign for body wash.

After watching those videos who cares what Old Spice smells like, you just gotta have it.  More importantly, you are very likely to share the video with someone.  You may even link to it from your Facebook page.  Your friends will “like” it, and they will share it with their friends, and before you know it everyone is talking about it, and…well, you get the idea.

Of course you probably don’t have the budget to produce something like this, but you really don’t need to.  What you do need to use social media for your business is creativity, a sense of fun, and when you approach social media you have to keep in mind the word social.

Social media is is about creating, growing and maintaining relationships.  It’s about building a personal network of  people who are interested in what you have to say, and equally important, joining and participating in other peoples networks, and listening to what they have to say.

Social media is not about hard selling.  It is about community. The sales comes once you have engaged the community, established yourself, and built trust.

So, is social media really something you can afford to ignore?

If you are in business today it goes without saying that you have a website.  Whether an international corporation or a local mom and pop shop, a website is a necessity in business today. The internet is a way for potential customers to find you, for you to find them,  and a way to keep in touch with the customers you already have.

But it’s not enough to have a static website or a storefront that never really changes.  The internet has become a conversation closer to real time than ever before.  People go to the internet looking for the latest, the freshest information they can find.  And Google, with 85% of the search market share, heavily favors websites that are constantly growing and evolving.

Google recently announced a major update to their indexing system called Caffeine, which updates in real time, offering the freshest, newest content available to the searcher.  This means that websites that are constantly updated will have the edge over sites that are less frequently updated.

So how does a business owner cope with this development? One of the best ways is with a blog.

Recently, in an interview with Entrepreneur.com, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s spam team, was interviewed regarding the changes that came with the Caffeine update.  Here’s what he said about blogs:

I would recommend that almost any business have a blog. Blogging is a great way to show people the human side of your company and provide information to customers and visitors. Blogging is also much lighter-weight than a press release. The only time I’d refrain from blogging is if you don’t anticipate updating your blog very often. If you only do a blog post every year or so, it makes your site look more like a ghost town than a vibrant community.

Of course many businesses have no idea how to make a blog site work for them. They are concerned about the time involved, and the writing. That’s where we come in.

At Mindstreams we have worked with a variety of companies to help them develop successful blogs that maintain and build customer relationships, and help keep them at the top of the search engines.

So my first task with Spinfield.com, is to explain exactly how to make a blog site work for your business.  Stay tuned.