Every month, I teach a social media workshop in South Florida for small business owners and marketing folk. I get a lot of questions, and address many, many misconceptions about using social media for marketing and promotion. Here are my top 10 truths about social media that so many social marketing beginners need to understand and accept today:
1. Social media is a set of tools.
Social media is not a singular or solitary communication method. It’s simply a set of online communication tools that people use to share content, profiles, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself. Social media facilitates conversations and interaction between groups of like-minded people. These tools include blogs, message boards, podcasts, micro blogs, bookmarks, networks, communities, wikis, and vlogs.
2. It’s more than just Facebook & Twitter.
Facebook and Twitter are the big ones in terms of usage numbers. But don’t neglect the secondary ones, especially if you are a B2B business. When it comes to social media, you want to go where your prospects go to talk about your product. Spend your time and effort in the most targeted places where you can find your perfect customer. LinkedIn, Merchant Circle, Fast Pitch are great for B2B companies. To find other niche social sites, visit: http://www.Traffikd.com
3. You can measure social media ROI.
Sure, tools are still evolving, and there is no end-all, be-all measurement standard for social media YET. However, there are multiple metrics you can use to measure the return on your investment of time and money. There are the obvious ones: website traffic, number of fans & followers, etc. But what about newsletter subscribers, average sale, overall sales volume, exposure value vs. marketing cost, conversions, coupon code redemption, sales event traffic (in-store or online), ebook downloads…the list goes on. If you truly want to measure ROI, you have to do a little work. Start by taking benchmark measurements of your business today. Then map out your marketing efforts into a schedule and plan. Track your metrics every month and compare them to your marketing and social activities. Use tools like unique URLs, coupon codes, landing pages and unique phone numbers to segment response from various sources. These are basic marketing measurement tactics, and they do work in social media.
4. Strategy makes you successful.
Almost 60% of social marketers say that their campaigns don’t generate new sales or help their company’s bottom line, according to a recent study conducted by R2integrated, an Internet marketing strategy agency. The report showed that companies seeing a bottom-line boost from their social efforts were almost twice as likely to have crafted an official social strategy. Bottom line: In order to move the needle, you need to plan how you will move it, and how you will measure it. Otherwise, you are just shooting in the dark. Think and ask yourself: What do I want to happen AFTER I get a visitor or fan on my social page? Where will I send them? What do I want them to do after they get there? Then tailor your message and content around that, keeping in mind that you must provide value for the consumer.
5. It takes time and effort.
A fairly comprehensive social media program takes roughly 30-40 hours per month to operate successfully. And you should expect to be building your initial audience of followers for 6-12 months before you get any decent interaction or monetization from it.
6. It’s not free.
You spend your time and sometimes money to make it successful. Time is money, is it not? Social media can be done without hard costs like advertising, but you will still invest your time. That’s time away from other business duties. There are great tools out there to help you organize your efforts, monitor your impact, and save time, but these tools frequently cost money. Social media pages (like Facebook) grow faster when there is advertising sending traffic to them. So the costs of social media certainly are not free.
7. Social media did not kill traditional media.
Social media made traditional media work harder. Integrating your social media into your traditional marketing will make the impact that much more significant and measurable. Each one should feed the other, and with every marketing piece (whether social or traditional) you should ask yourself, “how can I turn impressions into audience members?” Think about including links and unique URLs in your email, print, TV, direct mail, etc. to send those eyeballs to a place where they can interact with your company and subscribe to more info from you.
8. You can use it to sell stuff.
There are those who say social media is only for conversation and not for conversion. We don’t believe this to be true. We’ve seen companies convert followers into sales and you can too. Just don’t overdo it. You want to keep people engaged, so they keep following you. They won’t likely stay engaged if all you do is bombard them with marketing offers. But they do expect the occasional offer peppered in with the discussion. So don’t be afraid to ask for their business once in a while.
9. One hard and fast rule: Provide value.
People stay subscribed to your messaging if you give them a reason to. As consumers, we spend a good majority of our time dodging marketing and advertising messages, and actively seeking useful information from various sources. Be an information source and you will capture their attention and loyalty. Think like your customers. What do they wonder about? What do they need help with? What is of great concern to them? Answer these questions with content and they will keep coming back to you for more info, and eventually your product.
10. Social media is a cost of doing business.
A recent poll showed that 90% of consumers believe a company should have a presence in social media. Like a website, phone and email contact methods, social media is a cost of doing business today because it is the preferred contact method for many of your customers. Even if it’s just a basic profile on a couple sites, you need to have a presence in this space. And on Facebook and Twitter, you should sign up even if it’s just to claim your company name…before someone else does!
Do you have any truths to add to the list? Share them please!
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