If a person knows how to spell internet marketing and how to do a Google search, chances are that they must have comes across marketers, blogging about the effectiveness of social media as a marketing platform. The uprising of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has changed the landscape of online advertising. Social media marketing is an excellent means of targeting demographics and to increase your client base. Having a social media presence is ideal for generating free traffic for your website or blog and in coalition with other internet marketing efforts, social media marketing can help you to quickly realize your business goals.
A lot of businesses advertise on Facebook; they have fan pages and they have marketing teams continuously scouring the internet looking for viral content. Those very same businesses are trying to increase their followers on Twitter; are trying to build strong and healthy relationships with their customers. From the marketing perspective, social networking makes it nearly effortless to reach out to your potential customers. Social media is an integral part of nearly every corporate marketing strategy and small businesses are not very far behind. Nearly every website has a Facebook like or a tweet button on it pages. Having these buttons has become something of a standard.
Marketing also starts with a great brand-style business name. There are tons of domain name marketplaces out there, but this one is focused on only brandable domain names. Each name has the qualities and appeal your business needs to get noticed and to be remembered. Your business name is the door into your business, so choosing the right one should not be an easy decision.
Useful as it is, even social media has its share of perks. Business owners are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of social networking and do not really stop to consider what’s in it for them. Social media marketing can yield a lot of positive results but in certain situations, it might be in your best interests to devise a different strategy.
- It Takes Time: It has been discussed in countless blogs that social media help a business develop a brand. In fact, considering most business models, social media does not help a business directly generate revenue (unless you are Facebook of course!). Small businesses are oriented with more short term goals and cannot afford to have such a lengthy sales funnel. The majority of businesses, especially new ones, are not concerned with their business brand. I know, it is nice to have a brand and it makes you feel good inside but I assure you that you are going to feel much better if you generated substantial profits in the short term. It takes time to build a fan base big enough for you to make money off of it. So if you are just starting your online business or were looking to market your offline business on the internet and you do not have a huge budget, you would be better off trying alternate marketing techniques.
- It Takes More Than One Person: If you want organic “likes” and followers instead of robots spamming your page, you need to have a staff. You can also hire a virtual assistant to give status updates and to tweet regularly on your behalf. Someone who can represent your business and interact with your fans and followers.
Running a business is not only about marketing; you have to deal with customers and their orders; shipping and delivery; spammers and what not. If you neglect your social media accounts, it may leave a negative impression on your customers and make them doubt your credibility. So unless, you have the man power to spare, social media marketing is not the best option as far as managing your online reputation is concerned. - It Takes Maintenance: Like mentioned before, the owner of a business can’t really afford to maintain social media profiles. You cannot respond to every customer who posts an inquiry or tweets a question. Once again, another reason why social media marketing requires that you have a support staff who can handle customer inquiries. If you do not bother to answer your customer’s questions, then what the point of engaging in social media?
- It Takes Know How: Using Facebook Insights it is possible for businesses to evaluate its performance. The number of likes you have is not the only measure of how popular your business is. Efficient social marketing strategies requires not only time and money, it also requires an in-depth knowledge of the different variables that determine the impact of your activities. You do not need a degree to interpret Facebook metrics but you need experience. Even if you hire someone else to manage your accounts for you, you need to have some means of judging their performance.
- It Takes Content: Pictures, videos and stories are going viral every day and nothing makes a fan page interesting and attractive like content that gets a reaction. Sometimes businesses feature a picture of a cat playing the piano and sometimes they link to a popular post in their tweets. Every online business needs to feature original, informative and thought provoking content on a regular basis. So unless you have a flair for writing or you happen to know some excellent writers, social media is the cat you do not want to pat!
Everything being said and done, social media still remains one of the most popular means of generating traffic. However in some cases, social media marketing may not be suited to your business or the results that you are expecting.
Please do not hesitate to share your social media experience!
This post was written by Syed Shadab, a freelance writer at RnGWriter.com and was sponsored by Subtle Network Design and Marketing – a Clearwater web design firm. Cost efficient web design and digital marketing solutions are only fingertips away when we work together.
