Social Media Channel and Tools

Social Media Channels contain thousands of websites, blogs, forums, videos and so on. Individuals have now begun to spend most of their free time online catching up with various conversations and topics of their interest.

When one wishes to get the latest update on news, entertainment, movies, music as well as catch up with what is happening in a particular community of interest as well as catching up with friends and forums besides checking out for new product releases etc where will he find the time to browse through all the sites day after day?. Well this is where the RSS Feeds and other services come into picture.

Combined with services like Seesmic, FriendFeed, Twitter and Flickr uploads etc, the people get to know the latest post, the latest content as well as the latest updates on the other communities and networks of their interest as well as of their friends, products and so on. Such services are able to filter information and content as the individual wants it and bring the latest update to him on his mobile at all times.

Though the individual has subscribed to hundreds of sites, they do not visit each site all the time to check out the information, rather they use the feeds to alert and bring them the latest updates and deliver them in more meaningful and organized manner.

As a marketer, it is not enough for you to be present in social networks and participate in Social interactions through building your own blogs, forums and so on. You will need to use these social content tools to keep your customers and those that are interested in your products and services updated with the latest news and information that you are putting up as content, least they miss out on visiting your site and checking out the news.

Similarly using feeds you can also keep a watch on what your competitors are up to and get a feel of the mood of the market too. Imagine your customers having subscribed to over a hundred different forums and platforms. They are unlikely to keep a watch on and check out what is happening on your site and might miss out on a product safety announcement that you might have made recently.

By making use of feeds and instant messages, you are able to bring this important information to your customer’s attention and thereby enhance his product awareness which is sure to result in increased loyalty to your product as well.

Events and calendars too can be very creatively used by the marketers to provide very useful information to the interested customers about the various events that they have planned. By giving details of date, time, place, event details etc you can cajole the customer to attend the event be it a sale or a promo event.

It would be worthwhile spending some time and checking out the various sophisticated tools and services that are available on the social media channels. Check out services like last.fm contains features that enable it to keep a track of the music that you liked or listened to through I tunes etc and accordingly provides you with calendars and events of artists that you are likely to be interested in.

Similar such services are available with many others like Yahoo with their Eventful and Upcoming which lets the customers demand a particular event from you and you can in turn confirm their demand. Such options help you get closer to the niche customers who are listening and following you.

Technology has brought about multi-media capabilities and many advanced communication applications and tools that enable you to connect with your customers and send them audio, video, photo as well as text updates instantaneously and make sure that you get their attention.

The more you invest on understanding the capabilities of the social media channels, the better you will be at trying out a mix of channels and tools to build an effective marketing communication strategy.

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