A word of caution: on one hand a social media strategy is a terrific tool for getting your message out, without the filter that journalism and traditional publishing provides; on the other hand it takes time to become a successful citizen journalist – to become interesting, relevant and a trustworthy source. Because it is easy to do social media doesn’t mean you are instantly successful.
Below is a really important blog for public relations practitioners published by Jeff Bullas, about the impact of social media marketing. It writes to the twin issues of realism and caution.
The One Thing Most Experts Don’t Tell You About Social Media Marketing
Posted: 16 Oct 2011 12:44 PM PDT
Social media marketing is the hottest trend in the marketing world. Brands have discovered its power to crowd source sharing of their message whether it is via a viral YouTube video campaign or a Facebook competition.
Some experts will tell you that you should only use Facebook, others will whisper in your ear that online YouTube video marketing is the key and some will inform you that Twitter should not be ignored.
For some avid social media marketing pundits it is the “only thing” and they have even closed down their blog and moved it to Google+ or Facebook and even forgotten the importance of capturing an email database.
What Shouldn’t Be Forgotten
Amongst all this hype and noise, what shouldn’t be forgotten is that social media is just another channel to use to publish and promote your brand.
Optimized and integrated with traditional marketing it can turbo charge the conversations about your company both locally and globally.
Turbocharging your Business with Social Media Marketing
View more presentations from Jeff Bullas
What also should remembered in your marketing plans are:
- Strategy
- Creativity
- Creating great content
- Accurately targeting your message to your prospects
- Publishing and promoting with the most effective media for your mix of customers
These are just a few aspects of what makes a marketing campaign successful.
What the Experts Often Don’t Tell You
There is one element of social media as a marketing tool that has a lot of people excited and that is its reach as a global marketing medium.
This leverage and reach is unprecedented in the history of marketing and has taken “word of mouth” to a new global level often titled “world of mouth“. The crowd sourcing of sharing and adding its exponential power of “many to many” through online sharing on social networks has transformed and multiplied company growth and brand influence.
The “one thing” that the experts often don’t tell you is that “organic” social media marketing will take patience, persistence and time.
- Writing great content and eventually being recognised as a trusted resource and then having it embedded and talked about on other blogs and media will take time.
- Building your Facebook likes organically will take time to grow to reach that “magic 1,000″
- Obtaining 2,000 Twitter followers will require the correct tools, focus and persistence.
This can be accelerated through paid banner ads on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Paid social media marketing can be “the catalyst” to this organic growth of social media marketing to increase the pace and speed of sharing.
So if you want to turbo charge your business growth with social media marketing you may need to add some fuel to the fire and kick start your campaign with some paid ads.
Not everything in life is “free”
How have you added a boost to get your social media marketing booming and buzzing?
