Social media marketing is all the rage these days.
It's free, relatively simple and it can reach a wide audience.
When you really hit the nail on the head like some brands have done, you can have the results of a multi-million dollar ad campaign on a shoestring budget and speak directly to you target audience.
The big thing with social media, the thing that makes it different from all other forms of advertising, is that you have to get the people to come to you, and for real results, keep them interested on a day-to-day basis.
If you can make your ad campaign super enticing, people will be far more likely to share with their friends and your audience can grow itself! Friends tend to have similar things in common, so the pool of people interested in your brand keeps growing organically and the audience you are reaching is probably your exact target market.
But to get the exposure to convert to paying clients is the real trick.
In less than two paragraphs, social media quickly went from something simple to something really complicated to get right.
For brands or businesses that aren't very welcome in the social sphere, social media marketing can really be a challenge.
I mean, you see enough razor ads on television, who's going to look for the Man Smoother III Facebook page? Knowing that your friends will see what you follow will also keep people from interacting with a business on Twitter that explores the ins and outs of debt consolidation or debt management.
No one wants to look like they're having financial troubles or mix finances with fun.
Some brands are just not going to cut it unless they really pull out all the stops - I'm thinking thousand dollar prizes - but this still won't guarantee that your audience will turn into paying clients after you lured them to your page with competitions.
In fact, they'll probably forget about you if your updates aren't engaging enough, ignore your updates pushing your product or service or unfollow you.
Some businesses are just doomed to be the six feet tall, bespectacled 12-year-old, waiting for a boy to ask her to dance.
Social acceptance just isn't in the cards for everyone! Don't beat yourself up about it.
If your business's online presence is important for sales, rather focus on optimizing your website.
This way, people who need you will find you and you don't get a better audience than that! Make sure that your website suits the needs of your audience and doesn't alienate them with too much information, leaves them guessing about the information they want or makes your business look unprofessional with bad web design.
But this is really an article on its own.
What I'm getting at is this: social media can help you optimize your website.
To boost your search engine rankings you have to look to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and here links to your site and incoming traffic are extremely important.
Of course there is a lot more to this field, but backlinks and traffic will always be important.
It shows the search engine that your site is popular and relevant and search engines are in the business of giving the user what they are looking for.
Even for unsociable brands, social media can provide free backlinks to your heart's content.
Or rather, to your site's content.
You still have to be smart about it for the off-chance that someone finds your page.
Don't alienate the reader with boring updates, like only posting links to your pages.
They probably found you because they are looking for a service that you offer, so to turn that into a client, the links to your website have to look enticing.
Also, backlinks are more valuable if they appear in text that relates to the topic of the page because links that don't have anything to do with the rest of the page's content are generally just spam.
The same goes for links from your social network profiles.
Also remember that creating large amounts of links for a site in a short period of time will look like spam.
It comes down to avoiding spam, engaging the stray reader and using your business profiles for their SEO abilities that can make social media as valuable to your company as an attractive best friend to an awkward 12-year-old.
It's free, relatively simple and it can reach a wide audience.
When you really hit the nail on the head like some brands have done, you can have the results of a multi-million dollar ad campaign on a shoestring budget and speak directly to you target audience.
The big thing with social media, the thing that makes it different from all other forms of advertising, is that you have to get the people to come to you, and for real results, keep them interested on a day-to-day basis.
If you can make your ad campaign super enticing, people will be far more likely to share with their friends and your audience can grow itself! Friends tend to have similar things in common, so the pool of people interested in your brand keeps growing organically and the audience you are reaching is probably your exact target market.
But to get the exposure to convert to paying clients is the real trick.
In less than two paragraphs, social media quickly went from something simple to something really complicated to get right.
For brands or businesses that aren't very welcome in the social sphere, social media marketing can really be a challenge.
I mean, you see enough razor ads on television, who's going to look for the Man Smoother III Facebook page? Knowing that your friends will see what you follow will also keep people from interacting with a business on Twitter that explores the ins and outs of debt consolidation or debt management.
No one wants to look like they're having financial troubles or mix finances with fun.
Some brands are just not going to cut it unless they really pull out all the stops - I'm thinking thousand dollar prizes - but this still won't guarantee that your audience will turn into paying clients after you lured them to your page with competitions.
In fact, they'll probably forget about you if your updates aren't engaging enough, ignore your updates pushing your product or service or unfollow you.
Some businesses are just doomed to be the six feet tall, bespectacled 12-year-old, waiting for a boy to ask her to dance.
Social acceptance just isn't in the cards for everyone! Don't beat yourself up about it.
If your business's online presence is important for sales, rather focus on optimizing your website.
This way, people who need you will find you and you don't get a better audience than that! Make sure that your website suits the needs of your audience and doesn't alienate them with too much information, leaves them guessing about the information they want or makes your business look unprofessional with bad web design.
But this is really an article on its own.
What I'm getting at is this: social media can help you optimize your website.
To boost your search engine rankings you have to look to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and here links to your site and incoming traffic are extremely important.
Of course there is a lot more to this field, but backlinks and traffic will always be important.
It shows the search engine that your site is popular and relevant and search engines are in the business of giving the user what they are looking for.
Even for unsociable brands, social media can provide free backlinks to your heart's content.
Or rather, to your site's content.
You still have to be smart about it for the off-chance that someone finds your page.
Don't alienate the reader with boring updates, like only posting links to your pages.
They probably found you because they are looking for a service that you offer, so to turn that into a client, the links to your website have to look enticing.
Also, backlinks are more valuable if they appear in text that relates to the topic of the page because links that don't have anything to do with the rest of the page's content are generally just spam.
The same goes for links from your social network profiles.
Also remember that creating large amounts of links for a site in a short period of time will look like spam.
It comes down to avoiding spam, engaging the stray reader and using your business profiles for their SEO abilities that can make social media as valuable to your company as an attractive best friend to an awkward 12-year-old.
Source...