so·cial
adjective \ˈsō-shəl\
: relating to or involving activities in which people spend time talking to each other or doing enjoyable things with each other
: liking to be with and talk to people : happy to be with people
: of or relating to people or society in general
It’s called SOCIAL media. By definition, social implies talking and communicating. Broadcasting, spamming or other ways of interruptive, distracting, selfish, one-way, mind-jacking advertising does not work in the social media space. In today’s online marketing sphere, you can still buy media, but in social media you can no longer buy attention – you have to earn it.
This is especially true for businesses… Many large brands have misunderstood that we are turning to an era of collaborative ecosystems, not egosystems. Brands need to add value to our conversations and add meaningfulness to our lives.
With so many options – where should you start?
You start on your own website… Do you have a blog? Are you collecting visitor emails? Are you marketing to them? What about a newsletter? All of these free tools are available to you and you should include a combination of them in your marketing tactics.
Once thought of for only journals and diaries, blogs have evolved. Today, blogs are a core focus of small business websites. Why? 1) Blogs helps businesses show up in the search results, and 2) Blogs offer you an opportunity to showcase your company, its’ personality and culture.
The benefits of blogging include:
- Demonstrate thought leadership
- Improve SEO
- Build brand awareness
- Build relationships
- Provide customer support
- Build community
- Communicate news
With well over 1 billion active monthly members, Facebook has become the one of the most powerful digital marketing channels from almost every aspect available. Facebook is a great for businesses to connect with existing customers, make new contacts, and get the word out about their products and services.
Facebook can provide businesses the opportunity to engage with targeted users and present their brands, products or services. Business success at Facebook isn’t achieved by bluntly selling or pushing your products – it’s in developing long-term relationships with their audience. It’s a network of people and not brands or logos.
So how do you get “on” Facebook?
- Create a personal profile
- Create a business page
- Join a group or create a cause
Despite the large market share Facebook commands, there are a few drawbacks to using Facebook. 1) It gets a little “techie” when creating an app or interlinking your Facebook account with other platforms. 2) Facebook is constantly changing its layout and tool set. 3) Facebook is constantly changing its’ privacy policy which makes it challenging for you to stay on top of privacy issues.
With well over 1 billion users, 30+ million daily site visitors, 4+ billion daily video views, and 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube (owned by Alphabet aka Google) is the leading force when it comes to online video.
As a result of this success, video is currently the fastest growing marketing strategy for all businesses. Why? Adding video to your marketing can help you improve customer relations, increase profits and brand awareness.
The best news, you don’t need to be a Hollywood producer to get started. In fact, some of the most popular videos are simple, straightforward, and shot by amateurs. The secret to video – make them to the point. Your info-video doesn’t need to be longer than 3 minutes.
By using video in your marketing strategy, it can help your business:
- Raise awareness
- Generate word of mouth
- Improve search rankings
- Increase referrals
- Personalize your brand
Twitter is a place where people share what’s on their minds (news, stories, ideas, and opinions) – it’s a 140 character (or less) micro-blogging service, social network, real-time information network and social search engine all rolled into one.
With the ability to sent short, direct updates to targeted users, Twitter is ideal for businesses who want to make frequent connections with targeted audiences.
The major drawback to twitter is its learning curve, specific language, and a relatively short lifespan of a tweet.
Instagram (owned by Facebook) is the place for great, interesting and compelling visual content like lifestyle and design related images to short 15-second videos.
Businesses relying heavily on visual content are ideal for marketing on Instagram. This includes restaurants, clothing, technology, architecture, lifestyle and design related businesses. Brands targeting the 18-29 age group may do well in this platform.
LinkedIn is a cross between an online resume and an interactive Rolodex making it the social network for business people and employed professionals.
Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on it and many even use LinkedIn for recruiting and hiring. But it’s not just for them, LinkedIn is a valuable resource for businesses because of your ability to grow relationships and drive new business.
Like other social networks, it all starts with your profile. From there you can mine your network for connections, join group discussions, ask and answer questions, and stay up on the latest news and trends in your industry.
LinkedIn’s core is making business to business contacts but the real power lies beyond simple connections. No matter what your line of work or type of business, LinkedIn can help with:
- Demonstrating expertise
- Connecting with professionals
- Helping your search engine optimization efforts
- Staying on top of industry news
Pinterest is like a virtual bulletin board cork board that allows users to find and curate images and videos. Unlike other photo sharing sites, the emphasis here is on the discovery and curation of other people’s content, not just storing your own.
Originally known as the site where housewives share recipes, photos of bags, dresses and cosmetics has evolved into one of the fastest growing site for sharing visual content that includes photos, images, and videos.
Pinterest is an ideal site for inspiration. All that visual content will surely bring to mind ideas for marketing campaigns, photos, products, and other content. Sign up, browse around, and the let the site help you brainstorm your own projects.
Google+ (owned by Alphabet aka Google) is another channel for B2B marketing or those targeting individuals and companies that are focused or related to the technical and engineering industries.
What sets Google+ apart from the other social networks is it’s compatibility with other products from Alphabet including YouTube, Google Hangouts, Circles and Communities. This compatibility makes it an ideal channel for sharing relevant content for targeted users who are present in these resources.
Plain and simple – social media has a big impact on the way businesses connect and communicate with their customers and prospects. But, social media is just one of the many tools at your disposal and it makes a great complement (NOT replacement) to other marketing tactics that’ll work for you – especially email marketing. Done properly, email marketing could be your highest ROI marketing strategy (67% of businesses list it as their highest earner) and the integration with social media is a natural. Remember, it’s all about communicating with your audience.
Reach your audience where they are everyday – their inbox. Newsletter marketing is an extension of e-mail marketing – and it works. Your customers are in their inbox every day, sometimes several times a day, A newsletter allows you to selectively target your audience, engage leads and/or existing customers, showcase and sell more products, and stay “on top” of your audience’s mind.
Experiment: Create an account on a social platform not linked to yourself or your company.
- Start participating in the community
- Learn the platform and understand how it works
- How to add users as friends
- How to vote, share, like, or Tweet
- How to join conversations
- And especially, how to submit content
- Get a feeling for the members and their likes and dislikes
This exercise is a time consuming step, but by learning the platform this way, you will save countless hours in the long term.