If you are still not convinced that social networking belongs in your marketing mix, keep reading. Social media marketing continues to gain momentum as a first-rate marketing vehicle, gaining favor over traditional marketing in many cases. For instance, Pepsi will undoubtedly be skipping TV ads in this year's Super Bowl and instead investing the ad dollars into social networking marketing Instadp. Pepsi has been advertising during the Super Bowl for 23 years; yet now believes it may reach more viewers and get better results with social networking than with TV advertising during the Super Bowl! That really says a great deal about their state of social networking marketing today.
But beyond being highly effective, a new study from Wetpaint and The Altimeter Group now demonstrates social marketing can in fact improve a company's bottom line. The analysis revealed that companies who have been probably the most engaged in social networking marketing increased their revenues by 18%, versus companies not engaged in social networking marketing, who showed the average decrease in revenues of 6%.
So if social marketing is really effective that, as in the event of Pepsi's Super Bowl ads, it may replace the original, and has been shown to boost revenues by double-digits, it may be time to re-think your social networking strategy!
Exactly what do your business do to make the most of the benefits that come from social networking marketing? Here are a few tips to have you started:
Focus on the biggies: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
You will find so many social marketing options available today that to determine (and then maintain) a presence on them all will be virtually impossible for some small businesses. So instead of experiencing a large number of profiles scattered among many different sites, try to target your efforts on the "biggies" in the space. Currently, which includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Also, all of these have business profile options available for creating business profiles and accounts.
Take advantage of advanced features.
These "biggies" also offer various advanced features that help extend the usefulness and marketing impact of social networking for your business. For example, Facebook provides a Custom Tab feature that provides you additional pages in your profile for custom content. LinkedIn enables you to use RSS feeds from your blog and other resources, and YouTube video links could be easily embedded into your webpages, blog, and other social media.
Integrate everything to work together.
To have the most benefit of social marketing, be sure to integrate your profiles to work seamlessly with each other. Your Facebook page should have the ability to "talk" to your website, your Twitter "tweets" should display on your Facebook page, and your blog posts must be RSS-fed to your LinkedIn profile. This could take some outside professional expertise to simply help with the integration work, but it's worth every penny in the time you'll save in maintaining your social profiles and in the extra marketing reach your messages will have.
Maintain your branding among all your social networking sites.
When creating your social profiles, be sure to use your existing logo, corporate colors, and the "look and feel" of one's existing branding and web site. It's important that you maintain consistency among your entire marketing channels to reinforce your company and your brand in all of the places your web visitors and potential customers visit. Most social networking sites permit at least some level of customization.
Be committed to posting content regularly.
It doesn't need certainly to take plenty of time or resources to keep up together with your social networking marketing, nevertheless you do need certainly to commit to spending at least a little time on a typical basis to keep up your social presence. When you yourself have integrated your profiles, it will undoubtedly be easy to publish new content and own it automatically propagate to the rest of one's social channels without having to enter the exact same content over and over on different profiles. Of course, having a separate social networking staff will be great, but it's unrealistic for some small businesses. Instead, put together a cultural networking strategy that outlines which social sites you wish to use, what content you'll post, and the person who will be responsible for posting your content on a typical basis.
By including social networking marketing in your marketing mix, your business gets a cheap, effective marketing strategy that not only improves your online visibility, but also can subscribe to your important thing as well. So if you're buying a way to boost your revenues this season, social marketing can be a good place to start.
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