Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are 3 social media sites that you should consider joining Social media is the marketing strategy of the future. Whether you an owner of a big conglomerate or a small mom and pop company, your company can benefit from an active social media presence. Any marketing major will tell you that social media marketing is just as vital to your marketing campaign as handing out fliers, sending out ads, and filming television commercials. Here’s why.
Why use Social Media?
You can’t beat free advertising. Small mom and pop companies may not be able to afford a larger marketing campaign. Why? Most of the traditional marketing strategies would require that the company pay to produce, create, or host the service. Access to social media sites is free. This makes it an invaluable resource to smaller mom and pop companies that do not have the resources for an expensive and extensive marketing campaign. This is an area of marketing that a smaller company can excel at.
Social media can expand your businesses exposure to the larger community. You want your small company to reach thousands or millions of buyers? A solid marketing campaign can do that. If that small hypothetical company limited itself to newspaper ads and fliers, they would be limiting their marketing pool to a specific geographic area. While television commercials can give you access to significantly more people, smaller companies might not be able to afford the cost of advertising on state, national, or international television. Once again your exposure is hindered by monetary means. Social media gives you the potential to reach millions to billions of people. Don’t believe me? There are currently:
- 1.15 billion Facebook users.
- 200 million active Twitter users.
- 238 million LinkedIn users.
Social media gives companies an easy way to collect marketplace intelligence. Marketplace intelligence “involves gathering information on a regular, ongoing basis” in order to stay in touch with your marketplace. Market intelligence will help you determine your customers and potential customers’ needs and desires. With Twitter and Facebook, you can receive a constant stream of information from your customers.
Here are a few ways to use marketplace intelligence to analyze your social media:
- Use a tool to track what your customers are saying about your store or brand.
- Easily conduct surveys without having to pay for paper or employees to monitor the survey.
- Create an intimate image that will make your customers feel that they can message your company with their questions and concerns.
- Monitor how your customers feel about your company. Too much negative chatter is a warning sign that you need to make some changes and maybe engage in a social media clean-up.
- Analyze what draws customers to comment on your posts. Ensure that your style of writing mimics those successful posts.
An active social media presence will naturally increase your search engine rankings. Companies with high search engine rankings will appear earlier in the Google search results. This will increase the visibility of your website and company. Being on the first few pages of a natural Google search is important because the majority of internet users do not look beyond the first page or two of search engine results. Why does a social media presence boost your company to the first page of search engine rankings? Google judges all companies based on their authority. The more your company is naturally mentioned and the more followers your company has, the higher your authority will be.
So get out there, and start collecting a following. You won’t regret it. If you don’t have the marketing knowledge, skills, or experience to implement your own social media campaign, you may want to spend some of your marketing budget on hiring someone with a marketing degree. After all, doesn’t your company deserve the best?
Katherine Gredley is a full-time elementary school teacher with a background in marketing and a passion for professional development. She enjoys reaching out to business-owners and other careerists on the best strategies towards personal success. Image courtesy opportplanet
Great! Very informative and smart. Thank you for sharing.