Be a Part of the Social Media Marketing Revolution

Social Media marketing: The new platform for essential business activities.

So many companies write off Social Media marketing as something that only big brands, grammatically-challenged pre-teens or something that only the customers of other companies do – the statistics tell a far different story. Facebook now has over 350 million users, Flickr hosts over 4 billion images and the average number of Tweets per day globally numbers over 25 million. Here are the top 7 reasons why your company needs to take up arms in the Social Media revolution.

Boosting traffic: Social Media marketing can drive a lot of traffic your way, and in some ways it will be better targeted than what you receive from Search Engines. Answering questions on forums, blogging and video sharing on Social Media networks are also good link building strategies to improve your Search Engine ranking.

Online reputation management: Platforms like Twitter and Facebook are used by the biggest companies to discover customer feedback, solve customer problems and turn negative experiences into positive ones. Online is one of the places that most customers are likely to vent after a bad experience – and you shouldn’t let that sort of ‘publicity’ go unanswered.

Announcements and promotions: Because of the amount of time people spend on Social Media websites, they offer an impressive level of exposure for your new products, services and promotions. Most Social Media sites are geared towards ‘sharing’ information with friends also, so a little effort on your Social Media marketing activities can go a long way for exposure and advertising.

Predictions and future directions: Social media is all about trends, both long and short-term. When you actively engage in Social Media marketing, you’ll start to pick up on trends and buzz as they happen. When you ignore Social Media, you usually have to wait until mainstream media starts reporting on trends. By then, your competition will know just as much about them as you do.

Low cost, high returns: The biggest investment you’ll need to make in Social Media marketing is time. Almost every profile you can create is free, and you are leveraging other companies’ bandwidth and server space investments. For this small investment, you can get hundreds of links, new customers, great word-of-mouth advertising, etc. The biggest question is, why not?

Customer perception: Customer generation and lead creation isn’t the only part of the customer life-cycle that Social Media can help with. Without a presence on Social Media, your company won’t be thought of as cutting-edge, contemporary or enlightened. You’re a relic of the past … and even if your business is antiques; that is not an ideal adjective to have associated with your business in customer’s minds.

Social Media is not designed to replace traditional marketing activities altogether. It is a new platform that is designed to complement your tried and tested marketing activities like advertising, direct marketing and public relations. If Social Media marketing seems intimidating, contact us to find out just how fast, natural and easy it can be to create a Social Media presence to stay relevant in your marketing activities.

© Social Media Works 2004-2012