What has always been the simplest way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers with their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both the least expensive and most productive form of advertising. Most people tune out traditional method of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. Nobody under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers can make a purchasing decision using the input of friends and family.
Social media marketing supplies the electronic platform for word of mouth marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The common Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out each week. YouTube has over 100 million views per day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media than any other time in the history of business. Can your company afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?
If you are like me, you study from making mistakes. However, if you can learn from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are some common mistakes new marketers make when attempting to create and implement a social media marketing plan:
I’ll figure it out as I go- the biggest time waster is going right into a social media marketing campaign without any plan. Take the time to get educated on social media sites. Not all sites were created for businesses. Also, once you understand a site, learn all the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very time consuming and will result in many companies abandoning their plan and walking away from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of setting up these site, understand the various options, and spend time engaging instead of fixing problems. There are good online educational programs out there that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to venture out and develop a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this strategy is that should you grow too fast, you will not be able to match all the benefits of each site. The very best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the details and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and engage with others. If you set up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your insufficient participation could defeat your overall goal. It’s better to have one or two 2 completely utilized social networking sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with individuals who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will see you before they find your site. If they find your site and you also have a pic of one’s logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will most likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most importantly, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the largest stumbling block for most beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This sort of media is really a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield the same failed results. Instead of selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself as an expert in the field where you are practicing. For example, if you are a Realtor, instead of promoting yourself as well as your site, educate homeowners on what they can do to market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of people will act on do-it-yourself content. By providing valuable information, you’ll become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is ready to sell their house, they will probably ask for your services.
Same approach to communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Some people prefer to read, others like video, plus some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up how you post. If you to put it simply out a blog every day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. For those who have a blog one day, then put up a simple video the next. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you’ll achieve.
Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media activity. This doesn’t imply that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal would be to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post each day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Do it all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? Social Media Management services used to have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to communicate with people. Needing to log into multiple accounts every day to check the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to time consuming to get this done and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load most of my email accounts into Outlook, I could efficiently check and utilize the benefits of email. The same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log off of 5 different social media marketing sites each day, it will become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools which will enable you to log into your entire social media accounts for interactions may be the easiest way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media marketing plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media marketing dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social media efforts.
In summary, if you’re a small business owner seeking to create a social media plan for your business, you then absolutely should learn how to utilize the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. Unless you know how to create a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t likely to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above in this article, it is possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your own profitable social media plan.