Many businesses are turning to social media networks like FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn to market their business, attract more customers, and ultimately increase sales. Social Media is one of the most talked about methods of marketing – and with good reason.

Out of all the ways to market your business, Social Media simply has the best ROI because it is easy, affordable, and produces effective and measurable results. A well-planned social media marketing strategy combined with the right technology has proven able to make or break a business.

Here is why all businesses should be pursuing a social media marketing campaign:

• Increase brand awareness and visibility
• Know your customer base better and improve business intelligence
• Increase customer loyalty and shape your company’s relationship with your customers
• Use lead generation tools to intercept potential prospects
• Generate direct sales
• Establish a reputation as a forward-thinking company
• Improve internal communications and company loyalty

The key to success for any business is knowing your customer. Once you understand their needs, concerns, and interests you can reach out to them better and appeal to them more effectively. But while some companies may spend a fortune hiring a market research company to tell them what their customers want, social media provides a means for customers to tell you directly.

Social Media provides a meaningful two-way connection between a business and its customers

Customer-to-Business Connection

• Get a sense of what your customers want
• Learn where your customers are
• Understand their concerns and dislikes
• Hear what people are saying about your company
• Receive direct feedback from your customers
• Increase customer loyalty and shape your relationship with your customers

Business-to-Customer Connection

• Inform customers about new products or services
• Increase your brand awareness and get your company message and vision out
• Create word-of-mouth buzz about your company or products
• Establish a presence and increase your online visibility

Social media also provides an effective tool for Universities, research institutions and non-profits to communicate

Person-to-Person Connection

• Students share knowledge and information discovery
• Instructors can connect with students
• User collaboration tools for team projects
• Educate students with engaging social media platforms

Despite these many measurable, cost-effective benefits of social media marketing, many companies still fail to get the results they hoped for with a social media campaign. To fully realize the potential of social media, an effective social media campaign should consist of a meaningful combination of marketing strategy and creative technology:

• Concentration on a clear strategy instead of tools
• Defined purpose with measurable results
• Creative and innovative implementation of strategy through technology
• Unique and engaging software that stands out for your customers

AllianceTek understands that a successful social media campaign requires creativity and innovation. For example, just putting a photograph onto FaceBook isn’t going to attract customers. But what about an interactive photo album that provides a fun and engaging way for your customers to connect with your brand? AllianceTek helps businesses create and implement such innovative ideas that help realize the full potential found in social media.

AllianceTek develops innovative applications that integrate with popular social media networks like FaceBook, YouTube, and Twitter. Our applications can be developed with .NET, PHP, HTML, or seamlessly integrate with current social media APIs.

We work with creating social media applications for a variety of businesses and organizations. Not only can we help realize the power of social media as a marketing tool, we can show Universities how to effectively use social media as a communication and learning tool for students and teachers. Non-profits can use social media to spread their message and network with other groups to form beneficial relationships.

Find out what innovative social media solutions AllianceTek can recommend for your business and learn how to improve your results from social media.

My School Project – A FaceBook application for students to help them stay on task and effectively manage complex projects. Users register with My School Project where they can create and manage projects and share them with others through the social media platform. The application was built for FaceBook with ASP.Net 3.5 and SQL Server 2005.