What has always been the simplest way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive and most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. Nobody under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers can make a purchasing decision based on 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 per day. The potential for your message to be spread by raving fans is more frequent today through social media marketing than any other amount of 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, then you will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are several common mistakes new marketers make when trying to create and implement a social media 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 time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you understand a site, learn all the benefits of the website. Correcting mistakes is very time consuming and will result in many business owners abandoning their plan and walking away from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of establishing these site, understand the different options, and spend your time engaging instead of fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs on the market that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to venture out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this strategy is that if you grow too fast, you won’t be able to keep up with all the benefits of each site. The very best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the details and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and engage with others. If you start up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your insufficient participation could defeat your current goal. It’s better to have one or two 2 completely utilized social networking sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Profiles don’t matter- users of social media marketing won’t engage with individuals who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, lots of people will see you before they find your website. If they find your website and you have a pic of your logo, no pic, or hardly any personal information, then they will likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most importantly, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the biggest stumbling block for most beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This type of media is a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try out this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices certainly are a dying breed and trying 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 as an expert in the field in which you are practicing. For example, if you are a Realtor, instead of promoting yourself and your site, educate homeowners on which they can do to market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of people will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving Lifestyle Enhancement , you will become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell his / her house, they will most likely ask for your services.
Same approach to communication- not everyone receives information through the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, plus some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up the way you post. If you simply put out a blog each day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. Should you have a blog one day, then put up a straightforward 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 activity. This doesn’t imply that you must make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal would be to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s easier to have 1 post each 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’d use to communicate with people. Needing to log into multiple accounts every day to check the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The truth is, it became to time consuming to do this and I seldom 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. 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’ll become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools which will allow you to log into your entire social media makes up about interactions may be the easiest way to ensure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are a few good all-in-one social media dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social media efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner seeking to create a social media plan for your business, then you absolutely should learn how to use the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. Unless you 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 in this post, it is possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media plan.