Social media marketing is a basic requirement in today’s world, not something you should simply consider. The beauty of social media marketing is that it is done entirely online and requires practically no overhead, with the exception of time. Do you know what it is that sets social marketing websites apart from other marketing venues, like the Yellow Pages?
The difference is that each type of social marketing website is geared toward a very specific demographic group, further broken down into sub groups who have commonalities. A good marketing campaign must successfully take advantage of these commonalities.
Let’s look at Facebook as an example. When Facebook was starting, its target demographic group included students attending 4 year universities. Statistics show that over three quarters of the students attending a four year university in the U.S. at least HAVE a Facebook account. Most are active users.
So why does this matter to you? If you want to generate leads that convert to customers, you would like to develop a customer base that will keep coming back. More importantly, you NEED a customer base that will TALK about your company! Facebook users TALK about everything they do, everything they buy and everyone they come into contact with!
Don’t limit yourself to Facebook. There are many other social networking opportunities! Some of the different type of social networking venues are blogs, membership sites, photo sharing sites and microblogging sites like Twitter. You may not think of some of these venues as social networking sites, but rest assured they are.
Blogs are great social marketing tools, and that is why most companies have a blog attached to their website. If you produce interesting content for your blog, and generate followers who are interested in what you are writing, they are very likely to purchase from your website. Why? Because you become their trusted authority on whatever your blog discusses. Establishing yourself as an expert will generate leads!
Twitter can be used in conjunction with Facebook or a blog! When you post an update to Twitter, the service can also update your Facebook status or post a blog with your most recent update. Or, you can use twitter to reach out and let your followers know that you have made a new blog post or that you have updated something on Facebook.
Twitter is by far the most used social marketing tool today. Here are just a few of the things that you can do to reach out to your followers:
- Offer discount codes, special offers or other special events only to your twitter followers.
- Provide snippets of valuable information for your followers, with a link to your site and the whole article.
- Offer giveaways for retweets
The most important thing you can do is encourage your followers to retweet your posts. When they retweet, your username appears and you will start to see your list of followers grow at a pretty significant rate. Businesses that have their clients as followers often learn of problems that the client is experiencing before those who do not. Following your clients on twitter is a good way to learn more about them, finding out how you can further use social marketing to help them meet their needs.
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