Search Marketing Blog
Social Media… Changing Marketing as We Know It
Posted by Kent Schnepp on 05.07.2008
Conversational. Not conventional.
Let’s face it. Social media is here to stay. It’s not a fad, or a gimmick, or a hobby for high school nerds. Social Media Marketing has exploded into a full-fledged marketing channel. In addition, all signs point to it rapidly developing into a critical advertising medium as more and more people become Internet savvy, and also become less influenced by traditional marketing. According to Strategy Analytics, there will be more than one billion social media users by 2012. That’s a heck of a lot of potential customers using new avenues to discover products and services.
What does that mean to you? It is IMPERATIVE that you learn all you can about Social Media Marketing, and immediately begin to leverage the multitude of social networks to connect with your customers.
Ok… So what exactly is social media marketing?
Social Media Marketing helps companies engage and retain clients, increase brand awareness, generate traffic, and ultimately, drive sales. This is accomplished by interacting with their audience through various online channels including blogs, social networks, video, podcasts, photo sharing, wikis, and other sources of user-generated content.
The compelling aspect of social networking is the fact that current and prospective clients now have a voice, and that voice can directly impact your company for better or worse. Social Media Marketing is the means to create conversational messaging to ensure that your products and services are perceived in the best light.
Is social media marketing effective?
Actually, the question should be “How do I track the effectiveness of my Social Media Marketing campaign?” Connecting directly with your audience through social networks is proving to be very effective. However, given the myriad of metrics used to ascertain success, many times this effectiveness is not being captured or conveyed to site owners.
For example, tracking a site visitor to a sales conversion is pretty straight forward. But, how do you track brand awareness? Or, the influence of conversational content? Or, your company’s online reputation? Finally, how do you leverage – and track – social media to improve your customer service and support?
Let me answer these questions with another question: How are you currently tracking these crucial elements?
More than likely… you’re not. Therefore, rather than worrying about traditional online metrics such as unique visitors, page views, and bounce rates, it’s much more important to focus on leveraging Social Media Marketing to proactively influence your audience, and connect with them on an intimate level. Social Media Marketing should be used as a tool to make your company, brands, products, and services as accessible as possible to your audience.
Initiate Your Strategy Today
Social networking is the cultural phenomenon that is changing the way consumers use the Internet. So, get started today! Join Facebook. Create your profile on LinkedIn. Create your corporate blog. You may be surprised to discover how many people are already talking about your company.
Get things started by connecting with me at the following social media sites:
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook
Sheree Motiska 05.08.2008 at 2:29 am
Bravo.
Too often, marketers try to use social media type sites as a medium for traditional marketing methods.
What happens?
Disaster.
A reputation cannot be measured in clickthroughs and bounce rates indeed.
Sheree “The Social Media Butterfly” Motiska
laurent 05.08.2008 at 10:01 am
A good post i just read on measuring social media at http://www.conversationsmatter.org/2008/05/01/desperately-seeking-metrics-whats-the-business-case-for-social-media/