What has always been the simplest way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers with their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both the least expensive and most productive form of advertising. Most people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. No-one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers will make a purchasing decision using the input of friends and family.
Social media marketing supplies the electronic platform for word of mouth marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The common Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out every week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more frequent today through social media marketing than any other time in the annals of business. Can your organization afford not to participate in this marketing revolution?
If you are like me, you study from making mistakes. However, if you can learn from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Below are a few common mistakes new marketers make when attempting to create and implement a social media marketing plan:
I’ll figure it out when i go- the biggest time waster is going right into a social media marketing campaign without any plan. Take the time to get educated on social media sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you understand a site, learn all of the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very frustrating and will lead to many business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of setting up these site, understand the different options, and spend time engaging rather than fixing problems. There are good online educational programs out there that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media marketing plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in one day- it’s tempting to venture out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at once. But the problem with this particular strategy is that if you grow too fast, you will not be able to match all the great things about each site. The very best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the facts and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and engage with others. If you set up 12 at once, you won’t be as active and your insufficient participation could defeat your current goal. It’s easier to have 1 or 2 2 completely utilized social media sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with individuals who don’t possess complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will find you before they find your site. If they find your website and you also have a pic of one’s logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will most likely ignore you. Your profile can be your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most importantly, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the largest stumbling block for some beginning marketers. Once they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This sort of media is a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and attempting to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield the same failed results. Rather than selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself being an expert in the field where you are practicing. For instance, if you are a Realtor, instead of promoting yourself as well as your site, educate homeowners on what they can do to market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving valuable information, you will become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell their house, they will most likely ask for your services.
Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through the same medium. Some people prefer to read, others like video, plus some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up the way you post. If you to put it simply out a blog each day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it out up a little. Should you have a blog 1 day, then put up a simple video the next. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you will achieve.
Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media marketing activity. This doesn’t imply that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s easier to have 1 post per day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Take action all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I would use to talk to people. Needing to log into multiple accounts each day to check the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to time consuming to get this done and I hardly ever used my email. However, once I learned to load all of my email accounts into Outlook, I was able to efficiently check and utilize the benefits of email. Exactly the same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log off of 5 different social media marketing sites each day, it will become tiresome and your degree of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing Luxury Travel Experiences that may allow you to log into your entire social media makes up about interactions may be the best way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media marketing plan. Again, there are several good all-in-one social media marketing dashboards that will allow you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner looking to create a social media marketing plan for your business, you then absolutely should learn how to utilize the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. If you don’t know how to create a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t going to get built. By taking the steps listed above on this page, it will be possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your own profitable social media marketing plan.