Step Five: Two-Way Communication

Business-To-Business companies are suddenly finding themselves in a new social arena and wondering how to respond to the current trends of online marketing. How does one reach the millions of potential customers out there? How do we monitor what’s being said about our company, products, customers, competitors, executives, etc?
The first thing to do is define who uses your product or service. Networking with your customers can provide a great deal of insight to the inner workings of the prospective business including the problems they face, the solutions they’re looking for and who to talk to.
Social networking on sites such as:
Linked-in, Facebook, and MySpace are one way of linking you to your customers and can provide ideas, lead generation, research and development support, and the means to stay connected.
Communication works two ways. Connecting with your customers is one way and listening to what's being said is the other. What people are saying about you may be good, bad or indifferent but how can you set the record straight if you don’t know?
The best way to start listening is to start searching. Keywords and keyword phrases to search for include company name, brand names, company executives’ names, your urls, and the slogans or taglines you use in marketing efforts. Do this on all the major search engines every day.
It’s one thing to link to other people but you also need to know who’s linking to your site, blog, or content. It’s easy to find out, just enter:
Link:www.YourUrl.com(or .net, etc) and you’ve got it.

Lesson#5: Two-Way Communication

• Research the social networking sites such as: Linked-In, Facebook, and MySpace according to your area of business interest, and start communicating with your customers.
• When searching for exact names or phrases (ie: your company name, products, etc.) be sure to put quotation marks around your query.
• Set up e-mail alerts on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and let the search engines bring the query results to you!
• Add common misspellings to those queries to find out even more.
• Revisit the search engines once in a while, to conduct these searches directly from the sites. This will enable you to keep an eye on paid search ads running against your keywords or trademarks.
• You can also find out who’s linking to a specific page by putting in the url of that page. This technique works just as well for other pages as it does for your own. If there's talk about your company or brand on the Web, why not find out who links to the pages that are talking?

Getting started blogging? Check out my classmates’ blogs for ideas:
If you’re looking for a movie, KMovies by Kyle Henes, will find any movie you’re looking for! If you love cars, the BMW Enthusiast by Albert Frank, has information from hot looks to engine choices! For information about my professor at Champlain College, check out Elaine Young.