Maximizing your Social Media effect

By Veliadis on Thu, 19/11/2009

Social Media Marketing

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past years, you must have heard of the boom in Social Media. 
Brand owners are looking for ways to influence the status, comments and posts of users of Social Media like Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
And the way to do that is by reaching out to new age opinion leaders.
 
Opinion leaders can become a moving, living, breathing promoter of your brand for free. All it takes is giving the right people the product they want and provide them with ways in which to make their choice known to their network of friends.
 
Each user can become a brand ambassador who will give their own view to their friends (and to you) as to what they find attractive in your product.
 
You can probably predict that when a friend, colleague or acquaintance suggests a product, you are far more likely to sit up and listen. And when you listen, you are quite likely to become interested and then buy the product.
 
Hear about a product once and you might ignore it. Hear about it twice and you’re likely to think about it. So, in reality, the effect is like word of mouth on steroids.
 
Now, let’s look at your options. If you’re an already established mega brand, we have news for you: there are other brands that are out to take over your place and they will try anything.
 
The smaller brands can be more flexible with how their brand is used. Their budget is small so instead of spending it in advertising (online or offline), they use it to motivate people to try their product or service.
 
They have less control over what each user will say about them, but that’s exactly why this works: it’s authentic and people trust it. Period.
 
By targeting to the right people, they get free exposure (and sales) that is worth tenfold what their budget would bring in if they were to simply buy advertising.
 
So, how can Social Media Marketing help you?
  • It can bring more visitors to your website, and it can get more people to google you. Making your brand search-worthy should be your #1 target. Think about it; someone is actively doing something to find you, as opposed to being obliterated with advertising.
  • Unlike traditional advertising where you only pay what you buy for, with social media marketing you receive residual value because writings remain. What you create in Social Media stays forever, building a user-generated (and user-consumed) profile for your brand.
  • Your brand is exposed to people that ignore advertising. If your banner campaign has a 1% click-through rate, this means that 99% of the people who saw it simply chose to ignore it. In Social Media, a catchy topic can be discussed for hours (Facebook), days (Twitter) or weeks (Blogs).
  • You get feedback from the community. Advertising is a one-way street, whereas Social Media by definition provide users the tools to give you their view about your product. Your R&D team will love that.
Social Media are here to stay. If you’re still only “just advertising” and you need a hand with taking your product or service out of your audience’s blind spot, feel free to call a trusted partner that can help you.