So you have decided to take the plunge into the world of social media marketing. Congratulations! Social media marketing can be a fun, engaging way to get your marketing message out to your customers and develop relationships with them.
In order to take the plunge into social media marketing you must understand a few things or your campaign will not achieve the success you may expect.
There is a difference between using social media tools and social media advertising. Social media advertising can be as simple as purchasing ad space on one or more of the top social networks. It’s simple, but that is hardly using social media tools to their fullest potential.
Using social media tools means building a community around your business/product/service and establishing a relationship with that community. Social media is meant to harness two way communication but many people fail to see it that way.
This can be shown through one of the biggest misuses of social media tools—the blog. Nowadays, many companies have blogs because they are easy to use, help SEO efforts, and are a more relaxed way of getting your message out. However, many of these blogs have the comments turned off so nothing negative can be said about them. This takes the social aspect right out of the picture. No comments means no interactivity.
Effective social media marketing means letting your community address their concerns and issues, as well as their compliments. Your job is to market your stellar customer service and commitment to excellence by directly addressing these problems in a timely manner for the rest of the community to see.