How Effective Social Marketing Strategies Can Help Your Business
How effective social media strategies can help your business is due to the power it has to gather public opinion and, given the hundreds of millions of active daily users, these media sites have become a source of news and also a powerful way to spread news virally across the world.
The approach to social media marketing strategies is much different from the marketing strategies of the traditional models. Traditionally, marketing has involved the promotion and advertising to a diverse crowd of potential customers, but more often than not, this would reach only a few targeted customers and the majority could not care less.
In social media marketing the strategies are far different and the approach is to first determine exactly who the business’ targeted customers are, their habits, their needs and the places they hangout.
The business will then open accounts in the social media sites that their targeted customers frequent. They will join the conversations they are already engaged in and relate to the products the business promotes.
The aim of the business is to earn the confidence and the trust of their prospective customers on the social media sites and to eventually suggest their products and services as solutions to their problems and issues. These sites are also to be used to generate opinions and suggestions for improvements on their products.
What follows are steps involved in social media strategies.
Steps of Effective Social Media Strategies
- Market Research – Here the purpose is to first determine if the business’ target market can be found on the social media sites, and if so, which ones. Not all types of businesses will have the same experience on these networks. Businesses that are in the manufacturing and engineering sectors as well as businesses that sell very large ticket items are not likely to do well in these environments.
- Businesses that find their target market on these social media sites are those dealing with intellectual capital such as finance, consulting, legal and accounting. Others include those selling low ticket consumer products and products for small businesses.
- Also important is the geographical spread of potential customers – the greater the spread, the more suited the social marketing strategies will be.
- Business Purpose – Before a business utilizes social media strategies, it must first decide its objectives for using the platforms. The different objectives will determine how the company relates to its target audience on the social media platforms.
- The objectives include customer service, increasing customer feedback, development of expert status, increase brand recognition, increasing sales and many others.
- Which Social Media Platform – The obvious answer to this question is the platform or platforms that the business’ targeted customers frequent. The various sites include social networking sites, Wikis, article sites, forums, video sites, micro blogging sites, social bookmarking sites and many others.
- It is important for a business to determine which sites its target audience frequents and of those, which ones it will join to interact with its audience.
- Planning Resources – It is important for a business to map out the activities it will pursue on the sites and to determine the resources needed to carry out the plan.
- Relationships and conversations will have to be built and software may be needed to schedule and to automate such processes as posting to the threads.
Contrary to what many people feel, the businesses on the social media platforms are not all there to get more sales from their prospective customers.
In a number of cases they are using the platform to benefit their relationship with their customers, and they do this by assuming a support relationship that is more conversation than sales information related. Generating more sales is not always the objective for a business’ presence on social media.
Effective social media strategies will vary from business to business and also by the industry. One good point with social networking is that, in the online environment, your marketing efforts can be easily quantified, so it becomes easy to manage and improve on the results because they are easily seen.
You will believe the numbers. For example, 2,500 responses to the website’s survey in 48 hours, originating from the social media site are 2,500 responses. If you desire more, then you know the work that has to be done to achieve more and you will again be able to view the results and manage them accordingly.
Tags: Effective Social Media Strategies, facebook, marketing strategies, social media