General - Thursday, January 15, 2009 8:56 - 0 Comments

The New Media isn’t really that New!

The principles of marketing and selling a product haven’t really changed much over the years. It’s the vehicles in delivering our marketing messages that have. We’ve actually come full circle to where good old fashion word-of-mouth advertising is not only back in vogue, it’s been peddled as the hot “new media” with a fancy new name Social Media Marketing.

Authors are writing books, interactive consultants are consulting, bloggers are blogging and advertisers are dazed and confused about how to get a handle on this new wave of marketing technology before it washes their business away.

Well, here’s my little life boat of common sense for today — provide high quality products or services at a fair price and treat every customer as if they were the most important part of your business (because they are).

Social media marketing is just plain old word-of-mouth advertising accelerated by the advancement of communications tools on the internet. The principles remain the same. I am sure you’ve heard the old adage, “treat a customer well and they may tell the story once, but treat a customer badly and they’ll tell it ten times.” Social media works the same way only the numbers are exponentially larger.

So managing your social media presence shouldn’t be that difficult. Encourage happy customers to spread the word about your business and give them the tools to do it. You might have to invest a little time and energy on what those tools are.

Most importantly, if someone has had a bad experience with your business…deal with it! Solve the problem and do everything in your power to turn that experience in to a positive one. Customers don’t expect all businesses to be perfect. But, in those times of imperfection, it’s how you respond to a problem that forms long-lasting and passionate opinions about your company.