Social Media & Lead Generation Compliment Each Other

Now days, Social Networking has become a cup of tea for everyone. It has taken place on personality traits on every individual. Facebook might be as a girlfriend, Linked in as a boss, Twitter is filled with acquaintances to say 'hi' to all the customers.

Social media is not only social but professional as well. It is a great place to attract new customers.  It is the top emerging channel for lead generation among technology marketing professionals. It helps in creating a brand online and also strengthens the reputation.

Important factors helping in lead generation are:

•  Drive customer to the company website. It can be easily done through twitter. Good tweets with shortened URL’s always help.
• Keep updating your website content from time to time as it helps in boosting search engine rankings.
•  Distribute content as much as possible e.g. facebook, linked in discussion groups etc. There are so many other websites as well which allows you to add your complete company profile.
• Always monitor conversations about your brand and competitors. You should be aware what your competitors are doing.
•  Be responsive to customer’s questions and feedback.

ROI Based on Soft Metrics

While hard metrics of conversions (sales, cost-per-sales, and profit) is the way many businesses tend to rate social media ROI, businesses should also consider softer metrics as a means to measure campaign effectiveness by asking the following questions:

• Are brand-relevant tweets being re-tweeted on Twitter?
• Are there more fans and brand-friends on Facebook?
• Is there an up-tick in online conversations about a new product launch or web design improvements?
• Are site visitors and customers sharing opinions and discussing what they want and need?

Questions such as these may not add up to actual sales and quantifiable profit in the short run, but ROI based on soft metrics can certainly provide insight.

Therefore, companies and brands must clearly define their social media marketing goals, apply measurable metrics, and take a long-view approach. Only in this manner can social media marketing prove itself to be a viable and worthwhile means for attaining business objectives. Social media’s return on investment is best measured over time in the form of customer loyalty, customer relationship management, and with an improved corporate perception in the general marketplace.

A Tweet A Day Can Keep A Doctor Away

I am really fascinated by Twitter. That's cause for both joy and concern. To be fascinated is to be charmed and I do feel that way about Twitter. When I first came across it last year, I thought it was just a pastime networking site. But then later I started "following" some pretty interesting people (to follow someone is to sign up to receive a feed of that person's tweets). " Personally I believe one way to look at twitter is as a method of mass communication”.

Twitter is instant knowledge. I'm betting that over the next few years, Twitter will graduate from satisfying our teenage instincts for social acceptance to being a business tool, much like instant messaging has.

It's the increasingly popular social networking tool that was at first merely a convenient way to stay in touch with friends and family, is emerging as a potentially valuable means of real time, on the go communication of health care information and medical alerts.

Physician groups, hospitals, and health care organizations are discovering a range of beneficial applications for using twitter to communicate timely information both within the medical community and to patients and the public. Short messages, or "tweets," delivered through twitter go out from a sender to a group of recipients simultaneously, providing a fast and easy way to reach a lot of people in a short time.
This has obvious advantages for sharing time-critical information such as disaster alerts and drug safety warnings, tracking disease outbreaks, or disseminating health care information. twitter applications are available to help patients find out about clinical trials, for example, or to link brief news alerts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to reliable websites that provide more detailed information.

The use of social media and Internet-based outlets such as twitter to communicate medical information requires a high degree of caution, however, to preserve confidentiality and patient privacy in the clinical care setting, and to ensure that information sources are accurate, reliable, and current.