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Social media marketing is a relatively new concept in the online world. Being online can, in effect, be abstract in the social sense due to the fact that there is no face to face interaction. No doubt you can use video, however, that, in most cases, would be a pre-recorded message and as a consequence, it loses its real time effect.
The actual notion of social marketing has been around for a long time in the offline world. That is why people join various different groups that share similar interests within their communities. This type of marketing offline is extremely powerful simply because it is based on building relationships with others who share a common goal or who have similar needs.
When relationships are developed, people get to know and like one another. As we all know, people do business with people they like. Being in a community also gives you the ability to make people aware of your business and expertise. Very quickly through word of mouth, people tell others about you, especially when they run into somebody who has a problem that you can solve. We all like to solve problems, especially when it comes to helping others solve their problems.
The two key components to social marketing is the building of relationships and creating awareness. The very same principle can be applied to social media marketing online. The key is always to help people first. Social marketing can also be termed as viral marketing due to the fact that the social community can spread the word about an individual or business.
You have to be careful when marketing in a social community; if you are out there just blatantly promoting yourself, the viral effect will be negative. Your self serving actions will become blatantly obvious and you will be called out. To me, this is positive rather than a negative. I humbly suggest that you should always put others first, not because you will be taken care of later - but purely because it is just the right thing to do.
Marketing in essence is about finding a group of people with needs and in a social environment, your primary objective is to make friends, network with others and provide value to the community. Then, when they have a need, they will come to you for expert advice and listen to what you have to say.
There is no doubt that you can get a lot of traffic but just as equally your efforts could fall flat on their face. You must also be prepared for some harsh criticism; this is due to the face less nature of an internet community. People can be far nastier when sending e-mails to one another over using the phone or meeting face to face.
When doing social media marketing, do not over complicate the issue. Second, do not try to game the system. Clearly think out your message. In any social interaction, communication is critical; keep your message plain and simple for maximum effect. Communication is about understanding and sharing and this will be the key component that will make or break your campaign.
For Maximum results, you will want to monitor the traffic coming from the social networks to see what return you are getting relative to your efforts.
Another benefit of social media marketing is link building, which will help you get better positions on the search engines. This is really to your advantage because there is no doubt that traffic that comes from the search engines converts the best.
Put your best foot forward, share your most valuable content, help others as best you can and this will naturally lead to highly targeted traffic that will want to do business with you and additionally, you will have good customer retention. Social media marketing is the way of the future and should be very much apart of your marketing efforts.