“Fun” and “run” have never belonged in the same sentence, as far as I’m concerned.  I just shake my head when I see a “Fun Run” advertised.  For me, running is daunting and that first mile can be brutal. But runners will tell you that if you gut it out and focus on technique, you will overcome the initial pain and find that it is actually replaced by pleasure.  I find this analogous to Social Media Marketing.  You may have attended a seminar in which you were told that you are missing out on a significant opportunity if you don’t jump on the Social Media bandwagon today.  But that first mile is overwhelming.  Where do I start?  What should I focus my time on?  How does all this socializing turn into business? Over 98% of every blog that’s been started has been abandoned for this very reason.  Facebook and Twitter pages suffer the same fate. Business owners need a social media running partner and that’s where WSI comes in.

Taking advantage of social media to maximize business results doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend all day Tweeting or catching up on Facebook.  In fact, we find that 95% of our clients do not have the time to blog on a regular basis, much less spend time on Twitter or LinkedIn.  Over the last 2 years, we have developed a social media formula that places the onus on WSI, the social media experts, to do the heavy lifting while the business owner addresses social media from the 10,000-foot level.  One way we do this is through Social Media Optimization (SMO). SMO involves using a network of social bookmarking and social news portals like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and others to post content and links about the business in an effort to drive people and search engines back to the business website.  We also use blogging to turn the company website into an information resource through a strategy we call Content Marketing. At least weekly, we write and post articles on the site blog and then immediately syndicate the content to approximately 100,000 potential visitors. Search engines pick up and index this information very quickly make it possible to be found in regular searches, driving in even more traffic.

The results have been staggering.  Many of our clients enjoy a dramatic lift in traffic to their sites.  Additionally, they see a linear increase in leads and sales from the site.  By gutting out the first mile of a consistent and calculated social media plan, businesses are able to outpace their competitors and enjoy the rewards of competing in the social media race.  With WSI as their running partner, it just might be a “Fun Run” after all.

If you are a business owner, you're probably marketing yourself somehow.  Whether it be through direct mail, Yellow Pages, or the internet you have to be out there to be found.  But which method is giving you the greatest return on investment?  Are you measuring the number of phone calls you are receiving from those marketing sources and comparing them to each other?  It's quite likely that you aren't measuring ANY phone calls as this is a burgeoning technology that few business owners are using.  This is shocking considering how inexpensive it is.

Some of our savvy clients are using phone lead tracking on all of their marketing methods. For example:  a Smithfield VA Insurance Agent is not only using WSI Voice Marketer on his website, he's also using it for direct mail, phone books, and flyers.  Another client who operates 20 assisted living facilities in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee uses a unique call tracking number on each of its locations pages to independently track and measure leads to those facilities.

WSI Voice Marketer is the tool we use to give keen insight into this important measure of success.  It's powered by Ifbyphone.  Check out Ifbyphone's YouTube video, which does a pretty good job of explaining this.