Renée Warren's Blog

Slowed Economy Buffered by Low Cost Social Marketing Tools

November 14, 2008 at 3:16 pm Leave a comment

Are your small business fears growing as our economy declines? Yesterday, a leading economic organization officially declared the developed world in a state of recession. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the 2009 outlook is grim, that the GDP is likely to decline 0.3 percent on average in its 30 member countries. So the question is, have you been denying that our economy has slowed? What have you done to ‘recession proof’ your business? Well, I sure hope that you haven’t stopped marketing as this is the best time to get the word out about your product or service. If you haven’t already integrated a Social Marketing strategy for your business, regardless of the state of the economy or the industry your in, there is no better time than today to start.

With the development of many low cost and free-to-use platforms, widgets, sites, blogs, and applications, it has become increasingly easier to afford online marketing. Here’s a list of 22 low-cost or no-cost tools compiled by Mashable with some great brand examples:

1. Blogs (Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines)
2. Bookmarking/Tagging (Adobe, Kodak)
3. Brand monitoring (Dell, MINI)
4. Content aggregation (Alltop, EMC)
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting (Oracle, Starbucks)
6. Discussion boards and forums (IBM, Mountain Dew)
7. Events and meetups (Molson, Pampers)
8. Mashups (Fidelity Investments, Nike)
9. Microblogging (method, Whole Foods)
10. Online video (Eukanuba, Home Depot)
11. Organization and staffing (Ford, Pepsi)
12. Outreach programs (Nokia, Yum Brands)
13. Photosharing (Rubbermaid, UK Government)
14. Podcasting (Ericsson, McDonalds)
15. Presentation sharing (CapGemini, Daimler AG)
16. Public Relations – social media releases (Avon, Intel)
17. Ratings and reviews (Loblaws, TurboTax)
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities (British Airways, Saturn)19. Sponsorships (Coca-Cola, Whirlpool)
20. Virtual worlds (National Geographic, Toyota)
21. Widgets (Southwest Airlines, Target)
22. Wikis (Second Life, T-Mobile Sidekick)
*List http://mashable.com/2008/11/07/social-media-marketing-plan/

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