Social Marketing Can Be Used to Sell Anything
January 19th, 2009 | 
Author: What do AT&T, Avon and Coca-Cola all have in common? They all have a web presence using social marketing. But social marketing isn’t just for the million dollar businesses to use to promote their company.
Social marketing is for anyone and can be used successfully with just minimal amount of time and effort. Many real estate agents have turned to social marketing. Since a great deal of their potential clients have started hanging out online in social sites, those are the areas smart real estate agents as well as real estate companies are targeting.
Century 21 is one real estate company that utilizes social marketing.
Some ways social marketing can benefit agents is it helps them build an awareness of who they are. By using online videos, agents can put a face on the services they provide which in turn helps people connect more.
Why?
Because giving a face to the product or service helps to build a bridge of trust.
Agents can create webinars where they can walk clients through the steps of buying a first home, or teach experienced homeowners how to best stage their home for maximum selling potential.
Real estate agents aren’t the only ones who can use social marketing. Attorneys can benefit from creating an image and building a reputation. No matter how pressed for time an attorney is between running to court and consulting with clients, social marketing can be accomplished in a zip by using Twitter.
You can send a quick 140 character or less mini-blog update to Twitter about what’s going on in your world. You can link Twitter to your website or legal blog. It helps people see your online presence and makes you appear more approachable.
You don’t have to be a professional to benefit from social marketing. Take at home entrepreneurs who have Café Press shops. You have many avenues you can use with social marketing.
If you’re selling your graphic art images on T-shirts, you can create a Squidoo lens about your creation, then you can tweet when you see your product sample on your Café Press page, you can put content about your business on a Digg post - the possibilities are endless.
Social Marketing has also become popular among writers and best selling authors. Many use social marketing for such things as virtual book tours. They interact with fans and by doing so create a web presence and brand that helps the fan feel connected.
Those invaluable connections help fans feel like they get to ‘know’ the author, creating a relationship and that can then translate into sales.
You can sell tangible products, ideas, digital downloads, or yourself (for branding purposes) in the web 2.0 atmosphere. The possibilities are endless!
Tiff 
Posted in Uncategorized
March 12th, 2009 11:05 am
Morning Tiffany,
Well put. Ironically many people think Social Media is an umbrella term for the technology, when it not so much the tools we have to choose from, but rather the way in which we use them to spark conversations and engage our marketplace.
Selling anyone anything has always been about communicating the value - and value is an experiential, emotional, highly subjective concept. Better put, value is a human condition and the ever growing field of social media tools allows us to bridge the gap and connect and express in new and exciting ways.
It’s a great time to be in business (regardless what you might be hearing in the Industrial Media (TV, Radio, Newspapers) because never before have we all had such opportunity to reach out and connect with each other.
Social media technologies, imagination, enthusiasm and the willingness to take even the smallest action will set you and your business on a whole new path.
All the best,
James