Advantages of Social Media Marketing
Relationship Building
Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are getting a huge amount of visibility when it comes to building relationships with customers, especially in consumer oriented businesses. On the positive site, social media sites are often successfully used to enhance customer interactions, glean market information and consumer trends.
But, for many types of businesses, prospective customers just aren’t online discussing the latest plumbing service or talking about their interest in pest control. In addition, many business to business companies are finding that consumer style social media can be perceived as unprofessional and decrease their brand image. These BtoB companies need to take these challenges into account when leveraging social media as a part of their marketing strategy.
Increased Awareness
Social media sites allow you to create a presence that’s more personal than the typical corporate image, which can create a more positive affinity to the business. Posting pictures, links to blog posts and commenting on current news about your company can raise awareness of your company’s brand.
For example, if you have a health and fitness business, posting photos of actual customers using the facility or providing videos of interviews with customers about their experiences at the gym can create instant rapport with prospective customers. Creating personalities around your key personnel, trainers, etc. can create an atmosphere where prospects feel they already know the people before even setting foot in the door.
Social media provides opportunities to lead people through an educational process without using a pushy, sales-oriented approach. You can create links to interesting articles in your profile or blog comments on your Facebook profile that leads an interested person through a sales funnel that includes education, interaction and a series of follow up communications via an email auto-responder sequence that include various offers and calls-to-action.
Engagement
The “new” aspect of social media is really the increase in engagement that it creates with prospects and customers in ways that were either non-existent or at the most very weak. In this way, potential customers are becoming more and more aware of businesses even before ever doing a search online.
Understanding your prospect universe becomes key to engaging your prospective audience. If your specific audience “hang out” on certain web properties, you better find out where that is and then insert yourself in a non-business manner. This means getting involved in the conversation and engaging in a way that doesn’t dominate the conversation as we normally do with aggressive traditional marketing and advertising techniques.
But… you first need to become “findable” online. Through press releases or blog posting, Seo properties and other means, your customers need to find a reason to visit your social media profile.
Authority Branding
Creating credibility in your market is key to getting visibility within social media communities. Once identified as an expert and high-value resource in your field of business, you’ll begin to get referenced and links within your social media posts will be clicked, driving more and more people to your main money site (corporate website).
Publishing is one of the best ways to take advantage of this opportunity. As “content” is the key ingredient and core of Internet real estate, the more you publish content and get visible online, the more people will find you and want to engage with your information and your company.
To become one of “the” experts in your market niche, you don’t necessarily have to be the originator of the information. Experts are often those “in the know” and become the go-to resource when someone is looking to find out about a particular subject. Many of the information you publish and comment on can be just the latest thoughts, trends or knowledge about your industry.
Social Proof
Building your trustworthiness or credibility within your market can be supported and enhanced through social media engagement. The primary ways to do this is to get actual customers commenting on your Facebook or blogs, thereby providing the “social proof” as to the credibility of your company’s value.
Linking these customer comments to even more detailed testimonials and case studies on your website will build this social proof and credibility for your business even more.
Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and SEO Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.
