Social media marketing is a rapidly evolving process and increasingly is influencing the way we communicate. As the need for a website years ago was important (and still is) so to is the need for small businesses to have a presence in relevant social media services.
Social media isn’t a magic button you can push and instantly fill the seats in your restaurant or the shopping cart on your site. Many small business owners have dabbled with social media, only to decide it isn’t worth it or it doesn’t work. Certainly there have been plenty of cases where it failed. All that means is that you have to be smart about it. You must take it as seriously as any other advertising or marketing plan.
Before you do anything, you need to figure out exactly what you want to do with social media. What are your goals? You shouldn’t just sign up on every social site you can think of on a whim and expect great results. It takes planning, from the start.
- Do you want to offer customer support through social media?
- Do you want to offer services and products directly from the social site?
- Do you want drive traffic to a store?
- Do you want to direct traffic to a blog?
- Do you want to run contests and giveaways to expand your subscriber list?
You also need to look carefully at the sites you’re considering from an audience perspective.
- Do users on the site often interact with businesses and brands?
- What type of content is normally shared? Is it what you’ll be offering?
- How many people use the site?
If you’ve already dabbled in social marketing and it’s just not working, it may be time to re-evaluate everything. A good first step in this process is by calling on a company that has experience in doing it right.