Copywritersblog

While it’s clear social networking won’t put millions in the bank by itself, it seems to have proven its worth as another way to engage people, whether they’re customers, donors, voters, or anyone else with an interest in what you have to offer.

Social networking’s power lies in its viral nature.  One follow on twitter can lead to thousands of follows very quickly.

That presents a huge opportunity to test and spread your message, gather leads, and learn about your target audience.  The key is to manage it properly, ethically and correctly.  Social networking is about community, giving value, and earning trust — not about making the sale immediately.

For marketers, social networking — used in conjunction with a well-planned multi-channel marketing campaign — can be very effective at gauging attitude, testing response, and energizing people to take action, as we saw in the last U.S. political campaign.

When a candidate can turn down public money because thousands — if not millions — of donors gave $5, $10, or $25 a piece, that’s a powerful testament to the effectiveness of social networking as an important component of a well-planned marketing campaign.

This is especially important for non-profits.  Non-profits have been slow to adopt social networking strategies, but the implications for building communities of like-minded donors — sympathetic and willing to help your cause — are huge.

Who knows where it will go.  Or what will replace it.  But it’s clear — for now — that social networking is another effective way to reach your target audience the way they want to be reached.

If you’d like to weigh in, please  twitter me, post a comment, or send me an email at:  michael [at] michaelfialacopywriter.com.

Hope this helps … have a great day!

The 2007 Rotary Raffle (Get the Ford Edge) turned a profit for the Mason City Noon Club’s 5 designated charities.

The clubs website, www.masoncitynoonrotary.org, was used as a vehicle to generate donations for the first time, as the club launched a Google AdWords campaign to support raffle donations and ticket sales.

The targeted Google AdWords ads brought in donors from all across the country — from Arizona and California; to Texas, Massachusetts, and Michigan.

I used 2 Ad Groups of 2 ads each in the campaign. Google Analytics provided essential data to test my ads against each other.  It was a great tool to help determine which ads to keep, enhance, combine, re-write, or throw out, based on performance.

The AdWords copy incorporated carefully researched, relevant keywords and keyword phrases in the headline and body copy. The ads clicked straight through to the search engine optimized raffle donation page with its own unique url.

The response rate on the campaign was good enough to net a 208% return on investment.

The campaign generated a new house-list of “hot” donors that will be used to build a wider base of people interested in donating to Rotary’s charitable projects in North Iowa.

One important take-away: With ever increasing competition for available donation dollars, modern marketing methods are becoming a fact of life for non-profits like the Mason City Noon Rotary club.

The reason you need reciprocal links is complicated, but here’s the quick and easy explanation:

Search engines (like Google) look for websites based on relevance. Reciprocal links with other people/businesses/organizations increases your websites relevance to the little ‘bot’ that goes around cataloging - and categorizing (very important) - websites.

That means, when someone types in ’supplement entrepreneur’, or ‘small business marketing strategy’ (called “keywords”) in their search bar in their browser, your site will have a much better chance of being listed on the first page of results.

This hinges on other factors as well … like the relevance of the invisible tags on your website pages (keywords), and the actual wording of the copy (keywords) on your website.

The benefit is, it will help people find your website. If you have a good search ranking, prospects will be able to find your site easily … and you will make more money.

Please weigh in with your experiences and opinions on on-line and off-line multichannel marketing …

In his article, Online and offline marketing: more than the sum of the parts, dmnews.com, Andrew Hally of Unica Corporation sees a trend toward targeted, personalized, trackable online channels melding with traditional marketing to achieve an optimal 1 to 1 marketing relationship.

If you’re considering stepping up your online and offline marketing, or have already done so, please weigh in with your thoughts, experiences, and opinions.

What strategies are you employing now?

What strategies are you contemplating for the future?

Are you using web video?

Tell us how your marketing program maximizes relevance and effectiveness.

Thanks for visiting and commenting. I’m looking forward to the conversation …