According to a recent Harris Interactive study and reported in AdWeek, the largest growing demographic of social media users are people aged 45+. This makes sense. Younger people took to the medium early and joined in the early stages. Older people did not. Now older people are coming in at numbers that stagger. Whether their reasons are for business, pleasure, or a combination of the two your audience as a professional services marketer is flocking to this space.
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The rapid rise of blogs has given birth to a new and extraordinarily efficient piece of information design—the tag cloud. A “tag cloud” visually depicts the relative frequency with which keywords are tagged on a site by users. The more frequent, the bigger the tagged keyword becomes. (Visit Wikipedia for a more precise definition.) View full article

Nothing could be more topical for professional services marketers than social networking. We’re all atwitter about the possibilities. After all, the delivery of professional services is built on relationships and that’s the promise of Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.  While the jury is out on the effectiveness of these tools, particularly the ROI, none of us is willing simply to sit on the beach while the Next Big Wave washes over us. So, let’s jump and explain to your folks why you have carpal thumb syndrome.

Understand the basics

Businesses can no longer ignore the growing network of people communicating online and through blogging specifically. The number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002 is roughly 133 million, with over 346 million people globally reading these blogs. That’s a lot of people! The challenge is to create a blog where people will visit—and return.

Set your strategy and define your goals

The culture of blogging is all about being real—real people sharing real experiences and insights. Often, novice bloggers confuse their business blog with advertising or PR efforts. They try to use their blog as a forum for self-promotion instead of delivering value to their readers. Yes, blogging can align with marketing, but don’t let it be your main goal. Readers ignore blatant advertising tactics. If you try to scam them as Sony once did, you’ll get trashed online. The truth will come out. Therefore, it’s important to identify the goals of your blog from the beginning and layout a strategic plan.

Some common goals:

• Gain industry exposure
• Build brand awareness
• Connect with existing customers
• Deliver value through relevant content
• Be seen in the industry as a thought leader
• Build communities of supporters
• Drive traffic
• Increase new business.

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