Chip Wilson's Blog

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you are aware by now that social media is no longer a fad, but a tactic. What may have been a novelty for a while has now evolved into one of the most effective, and also most challenging, methods to market your business and brand yourself online.

What makes these media so powerful? Word-of-mouth. Just like a conversation over the picket fence, it’s more reliable than an ad, more personal and friendly than a pitch, and, like the coconut telegraph, has the ability to spread like wildfire with virtually no effort once the first seed is planted.

What does this mean for online marketers? If you don’t have a social media presence, you can bet your competitors do.  Now would be a good time to create one.   Not only are more people relying on multiple social networks and peer recommendations to make decisions about how they spend both their money and their time, search engines are starting to integrate social data into their results.  If you aren’t controlling the conversation about your niche (or even your self), you are opening yourself up for a rude awakening.

Take the time to figure out how social media fits into your marketing mix.  Plug into a some folks who can really help you figure it out, like Kary Rogney and his Tribe.  Build your own Tribe, for that matter.  Also realize the dark side of the equation – with social and real-time data becoming more and more integrated into regular search results, negative word-of-mouth can, and will, spread faster than you ever though possible.

Be proactive about starting conversations and engaging others, even (especially) when they have a difference of opinion.  Listening to what they have to say and respond with respect, or you will leave the fate of yourself and your online reputation in the hands of fate – never an optimal strategy.

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