What has always been the most effective way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both the least expensive and most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only one 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a confident return on investment. No one 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 referral 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 every week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more frequent today through social media marketing than any other amount of time in the history of business. Can your organization afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?
If you are like me, you learn from making mistakes. However, when you can study from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not study 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 when i go- the biggest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without any plan. Take time to get educated on social media sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all of the benefits of the website. Correcting mistakes is very time consuming and will result in many business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the fundamentals of establishing these site, understand the various options, and spend time engaging instead of fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs out there that are designed to teach business owners on how to create and implement a social media marketing plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to venture out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at once. But the problem with this particular strategy is that should you grow too fast, you will not be able to keep up with all the great things about each site. The very best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the facts and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, take part in events, and engage with others. If you set up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your lack of participation could defeat your overall goal. It’s easier to have one or two 2 completely utilized social networking sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Social Media Marketing firm don’t matter- users of social media marketing won’t engage with individuals who don’t possess complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will find you before they find your website. If they find your site and you 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 of all, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the biggest 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 a huge mistake and you will be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and attempting 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 being 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 individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving valuable information, you’ll become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is ready to sell his / her house, they will most likely ask for your services.
Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, plus some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up how you post. If you to put it simply out a blog every day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. Assuming you have a blog 1 day, then put up a straightforward 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 marketing activity. This doesn’t mean that you must make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post each day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Take action all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to talk to people. Needing to log into multiple accounts each day to check on the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The truth is, it became to time consuming to do this and I hardly ever 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. Exactly the same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log from 5 different social media sites each day, it’ll become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that will allow you to log into all your social media accounts for interactions may be the easiest way to ensure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are several good all-in-one social media dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you’re a small business owner seeking to create a social media plan for your business, then you absolutely should educate yourself on how to utilize the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. Unless you know how to build a house and you don’t have a hammer, that house isn’t likely to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above in this posting, you will be able to quickly and effectively create & implement your own profitable social media marketing plan.