Why social media?

Have you thought about why you should make social media marketing? what is the social medai for?

It comes down to gaining a competitive advantage. I like the quote from Oliver Young at Forrester Research:  “Marketers who embrace social media will outdistance competition, build community following, and boost loyalty” 

What better time to build better relationships with your customers than during a recession? Budgets are slim and purchasing decisions are often made based on relationships and connections right along with price. Word of mouth is powerful in good economic times and it’s even more impactful when economic pressures drive companies to be more creative and resourceful in purchasing products and services.

Here is six out of the top ten digital marketing tactics involving social media:

• blogging,
• microblogging,
• social networking,
• social media monitoring,
• blogger relations
• social media advertising.

Recently, Forrester & MarketingProfs published the results (eMarketer coverage) of a joint study of B-to-B Marketing in 2009 that ranked changes in marketing budget allocation. Of the top ten tactics, four were social media focused: online video, podcasts or rich media; discussion forums, social networks or communities; other web 2.0 media.

There’s reason for such optimism surrounding the social web. Companies that properly plan and implement social participation, can reap a variety of benefits:

• Build thought leadership
• Improve customer relationships
• Improve recruiting
• Reduce customer service costs
• Improve search engine rankings
• Increase media coverage
• Influence sales

NOW, COME ON, follow us on twitter @saleslion , try to begin your social media journey

Alibaba Group Launched New SNS

More and more Social Network website  are launched these days.

Last month the Bai community is launched by Sohu.com

and also the Taobao(Alibaba Group) SNS called Tao Jianghu.(Jianghu is a name to descripe a industry in china. )

the top 3 big site Sina.com is preparing its own social network, integrate with its wonderful blog system, But sina was making a kind of invitation marketing: only release the news of the product, but never open the registration, caused many people  excited to try.

and Yesterday Chinese B2B e-commerce group Alibaba  announced plans to launch a newly-developed product “Ren Mai Tong” today, integrating e-commerce and the social networking service functions to provide an online community for business people.

It will not only provide online gaming interactive functions, but also focus on the business networking activities to promote better business relations.

one of the chief engineer for the “Ren Mai Tong” product, told local media that the new service includes functions such as business card production, friends’ business cards holder, latest news, and customer news aggregation. In addition, if two parties reach an agreement on the website, they can realize online trading with Alibaba’s online payment platform Alipay.

I list some big SNS in china here.