Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship

A couple days ago I found an interesting discussion in Flickr. In the wedding photographers group some of the members were discussing about how to get business through social networks. The idea is simple, but effective: Post the pictures you take for a senior portraits session, engagement or a wedding on your Facebook and tag your customers. If your privacy options are set up so everyone can see those pictures, allow comments, and you will be the guy who took those cool senior portraits or those cute engagement shots, and that will surely bring you business.

The same idea applies to many different businesses. If you do a good job in whatever you do, you can probably ask that customer to left a recommendation for you on any of the social networking sites, or ask him to refer your site to other potential customers.

If you are writing a blog, write about what you have done for that customer and put pictures of up it if possible. Then let your customer know and he will surely show your blog entry to colleagues and friends, spreading the word about whatever service or product you do and how well you do it.

Word of mouth is proven to work well, and social networking is a powerful tool for keep spreading the word about your business.

Loopt is a social networking tool that enables users to connect, share, and explore using their mobile phones. On the Eco-Friendly Internship blog I previously discussed mobile marketing – Loopt offers subscribers the chance to become mobile marketers, of themselves and of places and events they recommend. An interesting feature of Loopt is that it can alert you when a friend is nearby, effectively turning your phone into a social compass. You can also use Loopt to give a heads’ up about a great place or event in your area, and in turn use your friends’ recommendations to find new activities you might enjoy. To learn more, you can take a tour.

To use Loopt, you need to first make sure that its technology will work with your phone. You also might want to check out their pricing policies, as well as your mobile providers’ messaging rates (Loopt currently requires the use of SMS text messages). Once you have established that Loopt is compatible and affordable for you, you can register your phone, verify your phone number, and download Loopt to your mobile.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish exploring all the Loopt has to offer – upon receiving the ten digit code necessary to verify my phone number I entered it into the appropriate field but my code was rejected by the site. I re-sent the code to my mobile in the hopes that I would receive a new code, or that the site would recognize the old code if I sent it again, but still no luck. There is a forum to post questions, problems, and discussions, but in order to use it you must create yet another user account.

I’m still waiting to hear back from Loopt; until then, my social compass is out of commission.

Social media websites is having positive and negative effects on companies. Word-of-mouth advertising has increased significantly because of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, causing an increase in brand awareness and marketing sales. Marketwatch wrote an article about this topic, saying that companies that take advantage of social media will more likely have visibility in consumer generated content and effectiveness in marketing. With the decline of traditional marketing effectiveness, social media may be the future of marketing.

Even though word-of-mouth may spread good news, it can also spread the bad. ZDNet wrote an article about how social media may increase identity theft on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Most recently, a person on Twitter who claimed to be a representative of ExxonMobil was confirmed untrue. This has caused people to think that social media websites are untrustworthy and dishonest. These websites have been accused of not doing enough to secure a person’s identity (or brand, in this case). Despite incidents like this, the marketing world cannot ignore the rising influence of social media and must be prepared of how it will affect marketing as a whole.