If you’re good at what you do you should have a lot of industry knowledge, advice and experiences to share with everyone.  What better place to share information than the internet where you can reach the billions of current Internet users around the World?  67% of these global Internet users visit online social networks, with 10% of total online time spent on these social media sites.  Technorati’s most recent figure of indexed blogs currently stands at 133 million, tracking on average 900,000 blog posts created within a single 24-hour period. That is a lot of content being created and today businesses are striving to be visible in search engine rankings.

Marketing agencies are doing away with traditional marketing strategies and adopting new media marketing tools to help their clients succeed in the rough economy. Social networking and blogging has become the fourth most popular online activities, even surpassing personal email. A survey reveals that 64% of marketers utilize social media for over five hours a week to carry out their client’s campaigns, with 39% using it for over 10 hours per week.  Businesses are saving money by relying on new media marketing companies, such as Triangle Direct Media, that have knowledge of the best use of effective search marketing tactics to leave a footprint in social media.

The power of blogging is nowhere near the end of it’s time as the number of online bloggers are increasing exponentially.  With so many potential consumers online today businesses are able to utilize blogs for brand awareness, relationship building, consumer feedback, and search engine visibility. Businesses can create a face for their brand, have an online presence and establish themselves as a leader in their industry via business blogging.  According to a survey by Blogads, the most trusted media source for useful information among readers are blogs.

Business blogging allows brands to obtain an audience of current and potential consumers to encourage participation and interaction about the company and it’s industry.  Discussions about current sales, new products, and industry related news gives consumers more insight to your brand and influences their buying decisions.  Combining business blog marketing with other new media marketing techniques allows for  an effective alternative to traditional marketing strategies that are beginning to fade, letting you become a recognized expert in your industry.

No matter if you own a large or small business, in order to get ahead today in the online world you must create content on a regular basis that addresses key issues, problems and needs of your target customers. When you consistently update your blog, post unique articles on your website, as well as pictures and videos on social networks, you will start to see your online visibility grow. When creating content for the web, you not only need to post frequently but you need to post trustworthy content that is valuable to the reader. An article in USA Today points out; if you consistently create quality content, you must market it. But how do you know how to successfully market all of this authority content to benefit your business?

Triangle Direct Media (TDM), a new media marketing company, helps clients market to prospects by creating and producing optimized content for blogs, press wires, article distribution and social networks. Continuously producing fresh content for clients with embedded inbound links, TDM has been able to move its clients higher up in search engine rankings. Utilizing their network of over 3,500 highly-qualified bloggers, as well as highly-authoritative social networks and article distribution sites, TDM produces new media marketing and social media marketing campaigns that are highly-effective for clients.

As social media continues to influence natural search results, companies should be mindful of their content strategy, development and positioning with the intent to eductate, inform and instruct prospective customers —- and help their search rankings in the process.

Starting out as an online journal, blogs have emerged into a cost-effective and easy way to build your brand online. An article from MSNBC introduced four constructive goals in addressing your site’s needs using a blog platform.

Goal 1: Provide Fresh Content

What types of content on your business website frequently changes? This is what you want to update regularly on your blog. Content may include upcoming events, sales promotions, press clippings, or informative articles about your products and services. Blogs will show your newest posts at the top while pushing older posts down the page, so you want to make sure what you post is more recent news than your last.  There are blog plug-ins that can serve your most popular or most viewed posts, above the fold to ensure relevance to your audience.

Goal 2: Stay Connected to Customers

Blogs aren’t meant for one-way communication. Just like in doing business, you have to attach another face to the scenario. Provide a comment area after each post where customers can provide input, feedback and opinions. Give the customer an area to comment on trends that you see in your industry or even submit their own testimonials about your services. The customer will feel more connected with your brand, and more likely to come back to read future posts.  Be sure to use a comment spam filter so your blog does not become a haven for spammers. A great filter is Akismet.

Goal 3: Be visible to search engines

Many SEO experts suggest launching a blog when concerning the improvement of search engine rankings for your business. Blogs effectively serve fresh content with keyword friendly URLs to your business site, which search engines love. These top keywords need to be what you want your business to be searched for, linking directly to your business’ site. This tactic will gradually increase search rankings, and potentially improve business.  Ongoing, relevant content not only educates consumers, but it also educates search engines about your industry knowledge, credibility and expertise.

Goal 4: Add new functions to meet change in technology

As technology is rapidly changing and growing, you will want to consider plug-ins compatible to your blog. To help maintain your brand’s reputation add video about the history of your brand or pictures from community involvement. These tools will keep you up to date with the fast-paced web technology and also provide variation to your site’s content.  Popular plug-ins that are now “must haves” include SEO-friendly plug-ins, comment spam filters, and other social media capabilities.

If you’re not comfortable with web technology or just have too much on your plate, you may want to turn to New Media Marketing & SEO professionals who have a strong understanding in how to execute these goals. Let Triangle Direct Media create and maintain a strong, growing social platform for your business.

Non-profit organizations are using online networks to aid in fund-raising. According to a survey, more than 85% of nonprofits around the country use social media. A particular nonprofit organization, Living Beyond Breast Cancer has recently won fund-raisers through Facebook, Blogging, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr. Through online networking you can reach so many more people, and even people from areas around the world you never thought to reach. By increasing friends and followers on these social media sites, it can in turn increase funding and cause awareness.

With e-mail blasts, personal calls, and brochures fading out, social media marketing is becoming a trusted branding technique for fundraisers. Nonprofit organizations are drawing a special fondness to this strategy with the current economic situation, as being one of the most cost-effective means of promotion. With social networking also being the fastest way to get to people, Living Beyond is expecting to double their target of $100,000 from last year’s goal. This particular marking trend has continued to reach a vast majority of nonprofits in the last two years. Nonprofits call this process of social networking to raise funds as “social giving”.

Even with the current economic situation, 80% of retailers are claiming the web to be better fit for survival from the recession than offline retail. According to the 2009 State of Retailing Online: Marketing Report, e-commerce sales will increase 11% this year from $141.3 billion in 2008 to an expected $156.1 billion. Almost one-fourth of online retailers surveyed for the study have plans to spend more this year on their web business plan than had initially intended. Cutting back on areas such as staffing, retailers are now focusing on enhancing areas such as search and social media marketing in their online businesses.

Organic traffic was rated over 50% among effective marketing tactics to be used. To increase organic traffic, retailers are using high value marketing tools designed to help address and optimize their site’s performance. Improving areas such as site structure, on-page and off-page content, retailers can increase online exposure using highly-targeted links and social media. Such techniques will enhance performance, brand reach and usability for online customers, in turn, helping to maintain customer loyalty and generate incremental revenue lifts.

There is no doubt that online retail is making its shift from a surviving industry to a thriving industry. With the current economic scenario it has become apparent that traditional retailers must invest in their online presence in order to keep their retail business thriving during the economy’s down cycle. Even in a down market, there is still evident optimism for the internet marketing industry.

I apologize for not writing in here for a long long time. Our company has grown exponentially and some of our blogs have been neglected. This is one of them. I have been pleasantly surprised with the many contacts coming in from this site so for anyone that is interested we will be appearing at the Electronic Retailer Magazine E Retail Summit in March.

So if you are going or are in the area stop by for a chat!

According to a recent study users are spending nearly half of their online time not emailing, not instant messaging… but actually reading content… And I may be speculating here but I am sure that its not a coincidence that BLOGS have gained popularity in the last few years at a frenzied Pace.

User generated content, user generated reviews have more credibility and now it seems more of an audience then ever before.

This presents an opportunity to those that are dialed in to marketing using social shopping or online product reviews especially those that are done by consumers for consumers.

What is Web 2.0 Marketing? The answer to that begins with what is Web 2.0? and Who are the Web 2.0 consumers?

Below is a video that Heath in our office ran across in You Tube. I have to admit I had never seen it. He ran across the video in a search for how other people are defining Web2.0 … Here it is and also a link to Prof. Wesch’s video on youtube. This is a good 4 minutes of video showing where the Internet is headed. If your company is not prepared at the very least you will lose sales by not embracing 2.0 marketing concepts.

The future for 2.0 Marketing is exciting, fun, effective, and the companies that employ 2.0 Marketing early stand to gain a foothold in the Web 2.o landscape.

Keep doing what you are doing if it generates results, but look ahead to what changes on the Internet are being brought about by blogging, social media sites, and user generated content to ensure your company’s place in front of the 2.0 Consumer.

Thanks to Prof. Wesch for making Web 2.0 easy to understand.

Here is a Link to the YouTube Video Web 2.0 by Prof. Wesch

Or Click the picture below and it will play right here.

 

 Web 2.0 [04:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Business blog marketing by Triangle Direct will:

• Increase your search results- This is the new SEO time to get used to it.
  • Everyone in the wide web is doing their metatags, doing URL rewriting, redesigning their sites, and crossing their fingers that the engines will give them the the nod to increased rankings.. and that is certainly one approach. Just not a good one.
  • Our blog marketing programs are aggressive, proactive and we get results.
• Increase Visibility-The Blogosphere is huge and growing. How is your presence? Do you have an official presence in the blogosphere or are you trusting the millions of bloggers to write about your company? Who controls your brand? You or Millions of Bloggers? A strategic business blog marketing program will put you back in control of your online brand.
• Increase Sales and Revenue generated from your website.

This is only a small sampling of what can be done with our business blog marketing campaigns. I haven’t even mentioned the benefits of RSS Marketing or marketing your video online through our video distribution and optimization programs. No matter what your company wants to market online,to who or what segment you want to reach we have the means and expertise to make it happen.