Social media is definitely the rage, and while a lot of companies and business people are doing it, very few are doing it well. All that means is if you are truly committed to it as a strategic marketing tool, you can still use social media to make a major impact on your business and keep your competitors guessing.
Yes, there are hundreds if not thousands of social networking sites and tools, but for businesses there are a handful that really matter…LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Why? Together they have millions of members, they are free, and if used correctly will help you reach your customers and prospects in very compelling ways.
At the most basic level, social media networks will allow you to peek into the lives of your customers, see what matters to them most, and give you direct access to them and their friends. So real estate professionals can see who is thinking about moving before their competition does. Divorce attorneys can see who just broke up and is heading to divorce. Car companies can see who is graduating from college and see which parents can afford to surprise their graduate with a new car. Pet food companies can see who just got a new puppy. Beer brands can see who is planning a party and make sure their brand has a chance of being served. And yogurt companies can understand how parents get their kids to eat healthier snacks.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. With 10,000 social media friends who each have 1,000 active friends, companies can potentially reach 10-million people with the right message or offer. For free! But it takes a team of people who know what they are doing on social networks to create an authentic social media campaign. You can spot a faker a mile away. As your network grows, and your friends share your news with their friends, your brand and content can show up on thousands of websites, blogs, and social media networks around the world.
But, most companies do not set their social networks up correctly. Sure, they have Facebook fan pages, or Twitter accounts, but they are not optimized. For example, when they post to their Facebook or Twitter account, they often do not put a link back to their website in their post. So while people may see the post, the company doe not know how many people responded to it. All they really need to do is add a link to the post which drives the reader back to the company website, and presto, now the company knows how many people clicked, where they went on the site, and ultimately if they purchased what the company was selling.
We set up the best social networking sites for our clients, customize the graphics so it is clear they know what they are doing, develop the content and make sure it is approved by our client and actionable, develop compelling viral promotional offers, measure the results and recommend ways to continuously improve, while managing this process 24X7. Some of our clients just want to get to 100,000 friends, but most understand it is not the number of friends, it’s the quality of the relationship.
Contact our Social Media Team about our FREE 30-minute Social Media audit or to get a proposal for your next social media project.
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