Free Internet Marketing Tools
Social media is the latest marketing buzz, touted by both online and offline marketing experts as a trendy way to reach customers. Fortunately, most social-media marketing tools are free. Popular programs such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook offer business owners the opportunity to test the impact of social-media marketing with little upfront investment. The free Internet marketing tools, if implemented correctly, can help to increase brand awareness, capture sales leads and improve customer interaction.
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Twitter
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Twitter is what's known as a micro-blogging platform. Once you sign up for a free account, you can "tweet" your message to the world in 140 characters. Twitter can be a valuable marketing tool for companies in several ways. Using the "search" function, Twitter provides an opportunity to conduct real-time market research with only an investment of time. It can also provide an opportunity to interact personally with prospective customers whom you may not have been able to contact via cold calling. In addition, Twitter can be a tool to enhance the effectiveness of other marketing strategies, such as giveaways, by increasing the number of people who receive the message.
LinkedIn
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Many people see LinkedIn as only a "networking" platform, but for the savvy marketer, LinkedIn is an opportunity to build brand awareness and attract sales leads. The key is to implement a two-pronged strategy of joining groups and answering questions. Regularly answering questions related to your industry builds your "expert" ranking while putting you in front of potential customers. Participating in the right LinkedIn groups also helps you consistently get your brand in front of potential customers so you become the person they think of when they have a need for your particular service or product.
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Facebook
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According to Facebook statistics, more than 500 million people use Facebook for more than 700 billion minutes per day. While Facebook encourages the purchase of Facebook ads to get in front of users, a free method called Facebook Fan Pages can give you the same opportunity. A Fan Page is a Facebook profile for an organization or entity. It gives you the same opportunity to share events, pictures, links and discussions with your customers that Facebook profiles give individuals. This ability to connect directly gives you a great opportunity to respond to customer questions and concerns and to find out exactly what customers want from your product or service.
Blogs
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You may be surprised to see blogs listed as a free social-media marketing tool, but if used correctly, your company's blog can allow you to interact directly with customers. Several popular blogging platforms allow you to create and easily update your blog regularly, but the two most popular are free: Blogger and Wordpress. Blogger is owned by Google; and Wordpress is an open-platform blogging program that has been around since 2001. Once you open your free account, you can use your blog to share updates about your products or services, case studies of successful customer experiences, examples of problems your product or service can solve or ways that you have gone above and beyond to solve customer-service challenges.
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References
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