Do You Really Understand Social Media Marketing?
April 30, 2010|
If you said “yes” to any of the above questions keep reading …
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Technology can be great when put to use by the right people at the right time. It is also something of great value when new concepts are acted upon by a business before its competition has a chance to do so. Many larger organizations are better equipped than small businesses to pro-actively create, harvest and take action on new technologies and marketing approaches. However, it is not my intent to talk about applications for larger organizations today. It is my desire to speak to small businesses that find themselves stretched thin trying to understand everything that is coming down the pipe and how to best utilize these new opportunities.
Social Media Marketing 101 for Small Business
Like anything new that you might want to implement, it is wise to know what you’re doing before proceeding or seek the council of specialists that do. For those of you newer to social media marketing, I would like to define a few highly publicized examples for you so we all have a good basis for discussion. For those more knowledgeable about this topic, feel free to read further down.
Social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property. Social media marketing (SMM) is the engagement with these online communities to generate exposure for the business. The purpose of SMM is to build a way that fans of a brand or company can promote it themselves in multiple online social media venues.
What is Facebook?
Facebook is a global social networking website that allows users to add friends, send friends messages, and update their personal profiles to connect with friends and family and tell others about themselves and what they are doing. Users have the ability to join networks organized by city, workplace, school and region and can create and/or join Facebook groups. A group allows users with similar interests to interact with each other and share information. There are 2 ways a business can utilize Facebook to market themselves (More detail on this below):
1. A business can setup a Facebook Page.
2. A business owner or employee can setup a Facebook group.
Actively managed and promoted Facebook groups or fan pages can allow your online brand to evolve and your value proposition messages to spread more quickly than traditional means, particularly if you offer information of value (be it tips, special promotions/discounts, helpful resources/links, informative videos or articles, etc.).
Build a Facebook Page if you:
- Want to build a brand, rather than a community
- Want your pages to be seen by people outside of Facebook, as well as inside
- Like stats on how many people visit your page and their demographic data
- Prefer the cleaner “look” of a page
- Want to use Facebook applications on your page
- Don’t want any limits on how many people you can contact
Build a Facebook Group if you:
- Want to build a community around your product or company
- Want your group messages to land directly in your group members’ “In” boxes
- Want to make it easier for group members to invite their friends
- Want to create an exclusive membership
- Prefer the “profile” look for your group page
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. While limiting, Twitter can also be a savvy method for encouraging immediate communication.
Twitter can be used as a marketing or public relations channel, much like an extension of a corporate blog. You can post about corporate accomplishments and distribute links that take people back to corporate