Social Media Marketing
In today’s business climate there are a couple of facts which are undeniable. Old methods of advertising and connecting with potential consumers are quickly moving the way of the dinosaurs. Television, newspapers and Yellow Pages advertising have become less and less successful as the online world has grown. Secondly, if you are not building a strategy to help leverage your business in the world of social media, your business will be left behind. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Youtube, just to name a few, should be featured on your list of musts for advertising in the coming year.
Why Are The Old Ways Not the Best Ways?
If you look at the traditional forms of advertising you will see that each is becoming less and less effective as time passes. Television watching has become more user friendly, which means less friendly to advertisers. Most television watchers have so many options that when a commercial comes on, the channel is changed to watch something else until the unwanted interuption of entertainment, (your commercial) is over. Also with the use of a dvr, a consumer can completely pass over all commercials to get what they want, entertainment. Businesses who relied on this form of profit generation need to look somewhere else to better spend their advertising dollars. Social media is the place.
Newspapers have been dying a slow and painful death for years. As time goes by, fewer and fewer consumers are buying and/or reading newspapers, because there is such a wealth of information available instantly on the internet. Where once a small business could purchase an ad and be guaranteed that thousands of eyes would see it, now that market has shrunk and continues to get smaller. A small business could do a lot better by investing their money developing a successful social media campaign that will help build your customer base, while building relationships with those customers.
Once upon a time, the Yellow Pages were the central location for all businesses. If you wanted a plumber, you just looked it up in the Yellow Pages and you were done. It is not so today. Fewer and fewer people rely on a book for their consumer needs. The majority of consumers go online, when looking for goods and services. If you don’t have a strong online presence, you are out of luck when it comes to building and growing your base of clients. A well thought out and executed social media plan are necessary to do this.
So What Do You Do?
As with all things you need to start at the beginning. You need to make a marketing plan. What is your message? Who do you want to get it? The goal of all successful social media marketing is the same as other advertising, increase sales, build a bigger bottom line, and make more money for your business. However you are dealing with a population that is not as easy to sell to as they once were, so here is where a well thought out social media marketing plan will get you on your way. You can’t simply friend people or get them to follow you on Facebook and Twitter and say, “Hi, I’m XYZ Company I sell widgets, buy my widgets.” There is no incentive for anyone to pay any attention to that at all. You have to give something to get something and it can be information, a coupon, a deal that is just for them. By doing this, your online following will become invested in your company and it’s success, without even realizing it is happening.
Why You Need A Business Blog
Blogging is an activity that few businesses use well or even understand. Starting a blog is easy and should be one of the first things you do when you start a social media campaign. Blogs can be personal, entertaining and interesting. You have the ability to control ALL of the information that is being published, so there is no way the great things your business is doing or the great products and services you are providing can be missed by consumers. Your message will get through. You can also easily use this blog to build your following on Twitter and Facebook. You can promote your products, tell stories about successful ventures, promote recent sales, and highlight customer testimonials right on your blog and then broadcast these stories to the world using social media outlets.
What Are You Waiting For?
It is a fact that all advertising momentum is moving in the direction of social media and learning how to leverage this media in a productive way is going to determine the success or failure of many businesses both small and large. If you are interested in learning more about how social media can help your business or would like to hear some ideas of how to social media can help you specifically. Contact Maine Web Connection today for your social media marketing needs. 207-215-7681.
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