Social media has become a household topic and a hot one at that. But beyond people’s personal use, social media for business has gone through the roof as marketers and business owners rally to get the best results. From small home-based businesses, your Mom & Pop run store, to the big businesses running the show; social media is sure to come up whenever the conversation turns to marketing potential.
Social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others far surpass any prediction or idea that originally existed; as far as their potential went. Starting as small ideas, they quickly became big, and took the online world by force. But where do they fit today? Many businesses are finding their efforts somewhat disappointing and chock it up to social media not being all it was cracked up to be.
Social media is a tool. It’s a channel. It’s another point of contact. The first mistake a business can make, whether they’re a small one or a multi-million dollar company, is to approach social media as the savior of all, or as the only component of their marketing strategy. To get results you need a targeted Internet marketing strategy that fully integrates multiple channels, and people to implement it.
Any marketer who tells you social media is your sole outlet is probably not worth their weight in pumpkin seeds. But if you take the time to really pin down your marketing goals, develop a strategy and identify all of your possible channels; well then you have a great recipe! And absolutely social media fits in to this, along with other Internet marketing strategies.
So why do so many marketing managers and professionals have such a love/hate relationship with the whole social media topic? According to a 2012 survey done by Forrester Research Inc., who interviewed marketing professionals about their top three challenges when it comes to social media marketing, these are the reasons they gave:
To confirm the frustrations of marketing managers trying to use social media, Nate Elliott, Forrester Researcher states: “The sobering reality is that nearly a decade into the era of social media; more social marketers are failing than succeeding.”
So what’s the main problem? The problem is that marketers are approaching social media as an entirely separate piece of the marketing strategy. Rather than fully understanding how it fits together with everything else you are doing, including the day-to-day running of your business, marketers make the mistake of not capitalizing on the full power and potential of a completely integrated approach. Yet this is also the very challenge, communicated by 25% of the people surveyed.
So what’s the answer to this? To find success using social media you have to understand how to use it as a support to the various steps along your customer’s buying journey. Social media gives you a much deeper reach into the more personal space of people’s lives, so use it personally! And use it for the following:
Hiring a Montreal Internet marketing company is a great way to get great results using social media. Why go it alone? Adeo Internet Marketing has the experience and a proven track record in Internet marketing, web development and social media. We can get your strategy online quickly and you can start seeing the results in no time.
