With the extensive use of social media, every business owner has a unique way to shape and augment their relationships with clients. Popular sites like Facebook and Twitter open more lines of communication between your business and your consumers, giving you the chance to develop and mend your customer relations and expand your reach by listening and replying to customers in a way that was never possible before.
Likewise, a company’s reputation for offering great service to their clients has never been so vulnerable. As social media sites like Facebook and Twitter grow, adverse remarks and complaints from customers could reach the computer screens of countless online consumers in a matter of seconds.
This article explores how to use and not social networking sites to promote your business.
Bad Strategies
On average, large companies have 178 corporate owned social media accounts. The problem with strategy is: Who will manage all these accounts? It is absolutely impossible to manage all accounts successfully.
If you want to see big growth, then we recommend that you not split your budget, hours or focus into too many things at once.
You cannot afford to sit around and wait for others to share your blog posts, retweet your updates and like your page. Companies with a larger and existing presence in the market can rely on social media users to share, like and retweet. New and smaller companies are not very lucky and need to have a backup to significantly impact their bottom line.
Engagement is a vital strategy for any social media marketing campaign. Leaving a couple of blog comments and joining a couple of Twitter chats is ineffective. Your goal in using social media should focus on intriguing consumers to want to come find you. You are pulling people in and they’ll be more willing to engage with you.
There is absolutely no value in this strategy. You’re throwing your money away by creating fake profiles. In fact, buying followers will negatively impact your EdgeRank, which helps Faceboo and determine whether the content you create is relevant and worth showing to users.
A new study done by Garter Inc. shows that business brands are paying more for positive reviews, likes and followers on social networking sites. By 2014, the research firm predicts that 15% of all reviews, like and followers will be fake. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission plans to take action.
Corrective Strategies:
Internet marketing needs to be more natural, as opposed to the manufactured backlinks. Websites should acquire links in a natural way. The key to building natural backlinks is to publish unique and engaging content that people will be inclined to share naturally on social media networks.
The content of your posts counts. While you shouldn’t be too personal, you should always be business-like either. Consumers don’t just want to see posts about your products and services you provide. Let your consumers get to know you a bit-the professional you, of course.
Words are just not always enough, and they don’t stick with a person as pictures and videos. Social networking services now make it easy to dress up your posts with pictures, videos etc. Take advantage of this.
Summary:
According to a recent Symantec Social Media Protection Flash survey, a typical e-business experienced 9 social media “incidents”, with 94% of the respondents saying they had negative consequences as a result. More disturbing, these incidents cost many companies more than $4 million in the period. That’s why it’s more important than ever to have a strong social media strategy to ensure there is no release of confidential information, that you are in compliance with with industry regulations, and respond promptly to all requests. Call Alex Noudelman (Technical Writer) at 905-760-1977 for assistance in running a proper Social Media campaign.