Social Media Marketing

August 11, 2009 – 5:03 am

It’s quite an interesting scenario. Given a choice between social media activity and something else -what do you think you would give up before you left your favorite social network?

According to a survey: More than one-third (36%, to be exact) would sooner give up chocolate, their Pradas, or their mothers-in-law before they gave up social networking. But only half would be willing to pay a subscription fee for those site.

It’s amazing to think the limits we’ll go to for social networking. Pradas are expensive, I

get that. Mothers-in-law are…well, that’s personal, isn’t it? But giving up chocolate? C’mon, people!

With Social Media Marketing solutions, you can easily embed social media into your existing website, or you can create a separate, on line community. Either way, you can interact with your prospects, customers, and your brand proponents in a familiar format—and then use their participation to extend your reach, increase revenue, and drive innovation.

Reasons For Social Media:

1. It’s free! – Face book, My space, Twitter, Linked In and other social networks require no funds whereas, almost all other forms of advertising and marketing efforts require some kind of fee.

2. Simple & convenient to set-up and maintain – Regardless of how much web savvy you are, social networks make it very quick and simple to set-up, customize, manage & maintain your profile. This profile lists crucial information about your business. Providing you have access to a computer, you can be a part of social media.

3. Buzz! – Unlike outbound marketing efforts such as traditional advertising, social networks not only allow customers to provide feedback to organizations, they actively encourage it. Interaction, engagement and sharing are all parts of social media, which if utilized in the correct way can lead to viral exposure, trust, customer loyalty, free market research and brand growth.

4. Volume – Face book has over 300 million active users globally and still at the growing face. Other Social networks can also boost extreme levels of popularity, with Twitter unique user levels growing by over 700% in 2008. Only My space is showing any signs of a decline in numbers.

Increase your marketing reach and effectiveness

• Generate demand and increase revenue: By building trust and deeper ties with the prospect. Acc. to a survey, Customers engaged in social media spends 50% more than others.
• Establish brand champions: One can communicate their message through social media channels and can use these channels to generate referrals, share products reviews or for innovative ideas. It also helps in increasing the site traffic and advertising revenue.
• Improve customer satisfaction: Through continuous engagement with the customers, one can improve the customer satisfaction tremendously through social media.
• Extend your brand visibility & reach: With continuous interaction with the customers and prospects or by creating a familiarity and making reputation among the customers through social media, one can build the brand buzz.
• Improve retention: By being in continuous touch with the customers and replying to all their queries i.e. building a good response rate will retain our customers for longer durations.
• Advance market research and foster new product innovation: By leveraging the insights from on line discussions, groups, prospects and employees – without having any expenses on costly research and travels.

By keeping focus on your objectives and considering the points laid out in this article, it’s not only possible to survive in social media marketing, it’s likely that you will thrive.To conclude, social media is a great tool for businesses to market themselves, but only if done right. Before you go down the social road, it’s crucial to figure out a strategy and stick to it. It’s important to consider exactly who you’re looking to target, how you’re going to target them, what you’re hoping to achieve and how you will measure success.