Social Media Marketing is about connecting and communicating with your audience online. You use social networking web sites and blogs to convey your marketing messages and also listen to your customers.
Social marketing has some distinct advantages among other internet marketing channels. For one, you do not need to incur any media costs to have a presence on social networks. You can set up a profile or page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites at no cost. You can also start up a blog, which typically only carries nominal web hosting charges. In addition to the low cost of social media channels, they are also extremely easy to use. You can have a presence on most networks within minutes, and new content management systems (CMS) like WordPress and Tumblr make blogging a snap!
The trick to social media marketing is to remember the word “social.” It’s important not to treat this channel as a one-way communication tool, like an email blast. Yes, to be effective you must post interesting, useful, relevant content, but your audience has a chance to post their own comments as well. Just like conversations are no fun when the other person isn’t listening to what you have to say, your readers will expect you to read and reply to their comments. Not with canned repetitive scripts, but with authentic and personal answers. Even when they complain about something. Especially when they complain about something. This builds a sense of familiarity and trust with your brand, which in turn can help your sales or fundraising process go that much faster.
Sometimes these sites also offer the option of running display campaigns, but even when run on social media sites these follow more traditional display strategies and pricing.
There are seven steps to running an effective social media marketing strategy.
- Know your objective
- Choose where you socialize
- Create your profile
- Invite people
- Post regularly
- Listen and respond
- Be authentic
Getting your social media marketing strategy right also helps your SEO efforts and can accelerate your sales process as it builds familiarity and trust in your audience.
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