Social Media Strategy – There’s More To It Than a FaceBook Page
Everyone knows FaceBook is currently the top social media networking site. Recent estimates point to 750 million unique visitors each month. There aren’t many people under retirement age who don’t spend some of their computer time on FaceBook.
Even so, a social media strategy can’t rely solely on FaceBook if you want to maximize your results. By design, FaceBook is more about friendships than it is about making sales, so care must be taken in how a business is marketed on this networking portal.
Social media takes time to implement, but it has become an essential part of an effective marketing plan for any business. While FaceBook should be a part of that plan, some other social venues that complete the picture include the following:
Typically less time consuming than FaceBook, Twitter lets you devote minutes each day to “tweeting” short messages in a constant communication stream that connects followers by way of tweets. Your tweets are viewed by your followers and vice versa.
Twitter, which by the way is currently at spot #2 among social media sites, is a way for businesses to reach out and connect with both existing and potential customers. While some use Twitter in an attempt to promote sales, others find it very useful as a brand builder. You won’t find many large scale businesses that don’t have a presence on Twitter; it has become almost expected.
If Twitter isn’t in your social media strategy, it should be considering the site receives around 250 million visitors monthly.
Considered to be the professional social media network, LinkedIn is #3 on the list of social sites with over 110,000,000 unique monthly visitors. You should not ignore such a powerful tool that lets you stay in touch with others in your profession. If you are looking for a job position or need to fill one, or seeking contacts in other parts of the country or world, LinkedIn might be the answer.
MySpace
With less than 10% of the traffic of FaceBook, MySpace comes in at #4. More than 70,000,000 unique visitors every month is too many to ignore. Simply create an account and then a user friendly and well designed page. The blog feature allows you to let others know what your business is about. Use the Grand Opening event to garner interest, and the classifieds on MySpace are a great way to promote your services or products.
Diversify to Reach More
While FaceBook leads its nearest competitor 3 to 1, it is still not the only social network there is. The power of social media is diversification. If you follow several networks, there is a much better chance you will reach the audience that you want to target and a larger percentage as well.
Based on the amount of time you can invest in social networking, you may only be able to frequent three or four sites. Picking from the top media networks is your best move, as long as each has something positive to offer your business.
Almost everyone in business has already learned that social networks are the best free advertising available. At the same time, you can’t make your participation solely a sales pitch to members continuously or you’ll get dropped from the loop, defeating the whole purpose.
Think of all the emails you get from over-zealous merchants. You probably don’t take time to read most of them, and may even take the time to remove yourself from their mailing lists.
Those who are most successful through social media have found a way to get their message across quickly, but at the same time, provide interesting and useful info to their target market. It is almost impossible to accomplish this by placing every egg in the same basket.
Category: Marketing
