Social Media for Business–interview series presents prominent Internet professionals from all over the world who are at the cutting edge of the latest Social Media Platforms. During this exciting and truly international interview series our experts reveal what are the most useful Social Media Tools and what you need to consider when you start using Social Media as part of your marketing mix.
Sergei Romancha graduated from Kherson Polytechnic College in 1999. Two years later, after gaining some primary experience in IT at the local Department of State Treasury in Kherson, Ukraine, he joined the most thrilling project in town that existed back in 2001 – Web CEO. Sergei worked on such Web CEO tools as the Ranking checker, Link popularity analyzer and HitLens from 2001 to 2006. Since 2007 Sergei has been managing R&D at Web CEO.
Q1. What are the most important Social Media platforms at the moment?
I believe Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are the largest and really most important social media platforms.
Q2. How do you see Social Media has changed the advertising communication?
I’m sure traditional online advertising such as dedicated emailing, PPC and banner campaigns still works, and its importance is as big as ever before. But Social Media give people more possibilities to understand if the product behind a nice ad is really worth to look at. So after people learn about your product or service from a traditional ad, they often verify information in search engines. This is the point where Social Media come into play – so it’s important to maintain the company and product reputation in social media: fill out profiles, maintain discussions, upload videos, submit articles with the company and product names.
Q3. How do you measure the effects of Social Media Marketing?
On the one part, we can see direct traffic from our HitLens live traffic analysis system. On the other part, we monitor mentions of our important words and react if needed to improve the situation. Our marketing guys know the tonality of those mentions, and also the general tonality as regards to our products.
Q4. What Social Media Platforms would you recommend to a company that is just starting their online marketing?
Register your company and personal profiles in the important business environment – LinkedIn, Xing, and Ecademy to start off. The Web marketers who have time rather than advertising budget can focus on Youtube, Digg, Twitter and StumbleUpon.
Q5. What are the key points to remember when a business starts using Social Media?
You should be ready to start spending much more time online and become more open and sociable.
Q6. How does Social Media Marketing differ from traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing is less personal; it’s more about money – preparing high quality ads and buying slots require a lot of money. Social Media in general is an ideal platform for a more personal business where your personal reputation is your main asset – such as different kind of consulting services.
Q7. Do you think every company (that has a website) should have a Social Media Strategy? Why?
I think it’s unwise to ignore Social Media, because in many cases they help a lot to establish a company’s Web presence. As I mentioned before, business profiles (also expert content) are the least a marketer can do in this respect. But the effort and effect should be accurately evaluated to understand what’s reasonable, especially if such a marketer is a one man band.
If you liked this interview there’s more to come in the series; please Subscribe to our RSS feed or Re-Tweet and share on Facebook. You can see already published interviews here: Social Media for Business – Global Interview Series.
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.