What has always been Personal Growth 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 & 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 based on the input of family and friends.
Social media marketing provides the electronic platform for referral marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The common Facebook user has 130 friends and is linked to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out each week. YouTube has over 100 million views per day. The potential for your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media marketing than any other time in the history of business. Can your company afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?
If you’re like me, you study from making mistakes. However, when you can study from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not study from the mistakes of others? Below are a few common mistakes new marketers make when trying to create and implement a social media marketing plan:
I’ll figure it out as I go- the biggest time waster is going 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 learn 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 from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of establishing these site, understand the various options, and spend your time engaging rather than fixing problems. There are good online educational programs out there that can teach business owners on how to create and implement a social media plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in one day- it’s tempting to go out and develop a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this particular strategy is that should you grow too fast, you won’t be able to keep up with all the benefits of each site. The best approach would be 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 as well as your lack of participation could defeat your overall 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 see you before they find your website. If they find your site and you also have a pic of one’s 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 of all, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the biggest stumbling block for most beginning marketers. Once they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This kind of media is really a huge mistake and you will be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional one way marketing practices certainly are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a fresh medium will yield the same failed results. Rather than selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself being an expert in the field in which you are practicing. For example, if you are a Realtor, instead of promoting yourself as well as your site, educate homeowners on which 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’ll become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is ready to sell his or her house, they will most likely ask for your services.
Same approach to communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Some people prefer to read, others like video, plus some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up the way you post. If you simply put out a blog every day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. When you have a blog one day, then put up a straightforward video another. 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 mean that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal would be to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post each day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Do it 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 talk to people. Needing to log into multiple accounts each day to check the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to time consuming to do this and I hardly ever used my email. However, once I learned to load most of my email accounts into Outlook, I was able to efficiently check and make use of 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’ll become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools which will enable you to log into your entire social media accounts for interactions may be the best way to ensure that you consistently implement your social media marketing plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social media efforts.
In summary, if you’re a small business owner looking to create a social media 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 build a house and you don’t have a hammer, that house isn’t likely to get built. By taking the steps listed above in this article, it is possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your own profitable social media plan.