A number of companies are creating blogs and white papers to implant into other sites with links back to the mother ship site. This helps the companies build a community and assists with their search strategy.
The Marble Group is building industry specific blogs into its website. “We will be emailing links to these blogs to our extensive database, thus directing traffic to the Marble Group website,” says founder Gary Denton.
Several of the Smart50 are using social networking to cement their brand as the premium brand. Website Kidspot uses social networking to create an online dialogue with the audience and to position the brand. Founder Katie May says they launched a social network for mums last July: “It was originally conceived as a safe place for mums to share, give/get advice, laugh, learn, teach,” she says. “However, we now use it regularly to talk to mums. We start conversations on everything from what they think the most effective remedy for morning sickness is to what they want in a loyalty program to whether they’d like to trial a new brand of nappies.”
Gym equipment supplier Hypoxi Australia started with a Hypoxi Facebook page, Facebook advertising and recently introduced Twitter to attract customers and keep in touch with old customers.
Founder Ariana Hendry says: “We noted very early in the piece that Hypoxi is a service that is deeply personal to women in particular, and so many avid users are not comfortable openly admitting to using the product. We therefore recently decided to use a “woman” named Luca to be the face of Hypoxi on Facebook. She is a healthy, young female who is a vocal advocate of Hypoxi and informs her friends about the benefits of Hypoxi and the promotions on offer,” she says.
Since introducing Luca on Facebook, Luca has made around 1,000 friends with Hypoxi clients. “She is a far more powerful mouthpiece for the brand, because she is just an average woman, sharing her experiences with friends,” she says.
Quinntessential Marketing has developed a peer-to-peer product called LiveSalary.com.au. LiveSalary lets members of the public swap and compare actual salary data confidentially. “The salary database is continually growing and evolving on a daily basis to deliver a truly useful, free resource,” says founder Paul Quinn. “We make our money by letting other firms re-licence this software and launch it on their own website.”
Some companies are using social networking to generate leads and offer customer support through technology like webinars. Media Movers has found great success with live chat.
“We have activated a ‘live chat’ facility through our web that grants access from customers to our customer service/sales team via the web,” says founder Greg McDonald. “It has been greatly received and our success with using it has been very good.”
A few smart companies use social media to build interest around their philanthropic activities.
ARW Chartered Accountants use Facebook to generate a lot of interest in a fun run. Founder Adrian Raftery says he has over 4,000 Facebook members, a YouTube video and some media coverage so far. “The run is still two months away,” he says.
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