Advertising via Social Networks

Greetings All, This is my first post on this forum and I thought/hoped it might prove interesting to some of you, as we are all trying to find ways to improve our craft and our ability to apply it. So here goes. I recently read this article in the June issue of Pro Sound News about our industry getting involved in marketing strategies via Social Networks. This article caught my attention because I've spent several years building an infrastructure to accomodate this "Brave New Business Model. Everybody's working on -line now via FTP servers, right? I can accept pretty much any type of media file, score it and send prints in any format for client approval. "I built it, so they should come right?" Not so fast. First you have to market and this is supposedly the web's biggest strength. Yet the 1st thing that stuck out to me in this article was the universal frustration everyone queried felt about the process of social network advertising. Quote: Much of the process boils down to hanging out online -- opining on topics sometimes far removed from pro audio, passing along weblinks of interest and so forth -- in order to engage clients. It also stated that very few had actually gotten NEW BUSINESS from this method, but all felt it to be an invaluable tool in maintaining contact with pre-existing customers. Frankly, I personally can't imagine a more frustrating and less productive method of networking/advertising. I could care less about some potential filmmaker having friends over to check out his/her new grill. All I want to know is whether he/she needs a composer for his next project and how can I make it on the short list for that gig? After years of reading and in many cases joining in on this banal banter, I can say that this method is 100% ineffective (at least for the time I could give it, which was 4 hours a day in the early stages of trying to "build something up.") for me. 100% of my current client base has all come from word of mouth! I haven't gotten so much as a single cold call in the last 2 years from either my website or any of the several social networks I joined for that expressed purpose! Oh wait, I did get one cold call (actually an email) from a NJ Ad Agency asking for a phone meeting to discuss rates & budgets. I made the appointment and after them never showing up (forget the courtesy of calling or emailing to reschedule) to ANY of the appointments they made, I stopped calling back. So what was the point? If you're not actually talking to someone to get a vibe from, how are you supposed to know if you even want the project, let alone be considered for it? I just wondered what do you guys think about social network advertising and more importantly, wondered if anyone here and any realistic marketing strategies that actually worked that they'd care to share?

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