Holiday Greetings!

Welcome to the latest edition of WSI Web Advisor Inside Edge.

Please contact us if you have questions or would like to learn more about Internet Marketing opportunities for your business.

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Social media has consumers engaging in self-enthused review activities for several brands. Whether or not your organization has undertaken a strategic social media marketing campaign, be sure that your brand is being "chatted" about. From blogs, to review sites, to consumer forums, to Tweets, photos, videos and podcasts, there's a lot of chatter out there.

Aside from the information you provide about your product or service via your website or company blog, purchasing decisions by customers are made by looking at your social catalog of reviews posted by other consumers. Unlike your company-made catalog or brochure, this consumer generated social media catalog has a mix of positive, negative and neutral reviews.

By engaging in consistent and sustained social media monitoring and measurement, you can leverage positive reviews and take the necessary action to negate the effect of the not-so flattering comments.

To get more details on how your business can monitor and measure social media exposure for your company, read the WSI Whitepaper titled "Leveraging Social Chatter: Online Brand Reputation Monitoring and Management - A Wakeup Call".

Too many brands have taken a hit, not only to their brand reputation and company image, but measurable losses negatively impacting sales and their bottom lines. Established brands like Pepsi and Domino's Pizza have been hurt by a webcast or video circling the social media landscape. Ignoring social media is no longer an option, no matter how strong your offline and other online brand promotional strategies may be. Compare social chatter to traditional word-of-mouth - despite all the advancement in technology and media channels, word-of-mouth still has a very strong and dominant role to play in how your brand is viewed by consumers.

Getting an entry into the social conversations that are going on about your company or brand is not difficult at all. The important thing is to do it right. To use relevant social media channels and tools. To create professional content, in copy, in images, in videos, in photos, or any other method that encourages a positive dialogue amongst the social chatterati!

View WSI’s Webinar on "Online Brand Reputation Management" to gain valuable insights into how monitoring and management of social media can help your branding efforts online.

Customer-speak is very highly regarded in the buying and decision making process. Start gaining an insight into what people are saying about your brand, using free online tools like Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts. There are several tools like Trackur and HowSociable that can help you monitor social networking sites like Twitter, Mashable, MySpace, Windows Live Spaces, Yelp, and so on. Encourage positive reviews and posts by adding more information to the "threads". Its easy for one negative post to spark off and incite other negative experiences to fall out of the closet. You can't push them back in, but you can bring out more of the good stuff and crank up the value quotient of your brand. There's no better and more effective brand ambassador than a happy customer. Keep them happy, and keep them talking, or blogging, or photoblogging, or whatever... just let them keep saying good things!

There's a lot going on in the social media world. While the channels are multiple and easy to use, monitoring and management of your brand reputation across these can be an overwhelming task. It's easy to get carried away and be swamped. In that lies the risk of not catching a negative spark in time to douse it. Your local WSI Consultant is your best resource -- get in touch today!