Social Media Marketing

Social media and social networking have become a phenomenon in recent times with Facebook, Twitter and many others growing at incredible rates.  They present another marketing platform to communicate with potential customers and promote your business.  Many business people still feel unsure about where to start and how to manage a social media strategy.

A key starting point is to assess whether or not specific social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are appropriate and relevant for your digital marketing plan and your target markets.  Are your potential customers using them?  It can often help to check if your competitors are already leveraging social media, particularly those that you consider to be market leaders and innovators.

Another consideration is how much time and resource you have to put into social media management.  For larger clients it can be easy enough to allocate time each week for a keen young marketing graduate to develop Facebook marketing, whereas for smaller businesses it may be more difficult sparing time and also learning how its done effectively.

We can help with social media strategy: setting up campaigns, educating clients and brainstorming innovative ways to reach and engage potential customers.  There are certain best practice social media management rules that apply, and even etiquette for the differing tools and communities in the social networking space.

Social media marketing may not be appropriate for all businesses and markets, but for many it has power to cover a huge audience in real-time, producing a range of benefits such as:

• Encouraging word of mouth promotion.  Just as happy customers used to tell their friends on the phone or in person, now social networking can let them tell alot more friends alot quicker.
• Developing brand loyalty.  Through giving, educating or entertaining you can keep your brand in front of existing and potential customers.
• Gaining more links back to your own website.  As others mention you and ‘pass you on’ this gets your website more visibility which can generate more traffic and improve your visibility if Google sees value in the new links back to your site.
• Better engaging with your market.  Whether its asking your customers for feedback, trying a new promotion or even handling a problem, you can reach more people faster but still interact at a personal level.

Social media marketing can compliment and support other digital marketing initiatives as part of a broader search engine marketing strategy. 

The core service that clients value is where we review best practice and global leaders and provide ideas and initiatives each month for you to apply to your own social media platforms. To talk about possibilities for utilising the power of social media marketing for your business and to develop a social media strategy, please Contact Us.