You would have heard so many marketing experts telling everyone to use social media as part of your promotional marketing mix. The Internet is awash with information about the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. Numerous articles have been written on how using social media can help promote your brand image and how you can drive web traffic to your company’s main website.
Keep in mind that social media is a marketing tool and is only effective when used correctly to promote your business.
The key question for a business is “How do you leverage social media to generate real revenue and customers?” In today’s digitally connected society, your customers, regardless of their age, gender, or economic status, will be active on social networking sites.
Here are some of the latest social media usage statistics that will make a business take notice:
- 68% of small businesses will increase their social media marketing efforts in the next year.
- 56% of Twitter users say they use the microblogging site for business or work-related purposes.
- Over 40% of people have ‘Friends’ or ‘Liked’ a brand/business on Facebook or MySpace.
- 20% of tweets are about commercial products.
- 46% of Facebook users say they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook
- 44% of Twitter users have recommended a product
- Social media played a big role in holiday shopping: 28% of shoppers say social media has influenced their purchases.
Only on the Facebook site:
- More than 400 million active users
- 50% of active users log into Facebook on any given day
- The average user has 130 friends
- People spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on Facebook
- There are over 160 million Pages, Groups, and Events that people engage with
- The average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
- The average user creates 70 pieces of content each month
- Men and women use social sites almost equally (47% vs. 53%)
- 61% of Facebook users are middle-aged or older, with an average age of 37.
- 18-24 year olds do not dominate any particular social networking site; are scattered everywhere
- More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month
Your company’s involvement in social media should go without saying, however, many companies will set up social media sites and make no effort to participate and engage with the groups their potential customers use.
To be successful using social media, your business must find out where your potential customers spend their time on these sites so you can interact with them where they prefer and not where you prefer or feel comfortable. Participation and engagement with your social networks will form a platform from which to build relationships with communities of interest. This, in turn, will provide a new channel of customer acquisition using the sharing and liking capabilities of the social media world. This “sharing” is the equivalent of word of mouth in traditional marketing.
Here are the 7 business development marketing tips for using social media:
1. Go where your customers are and not where you feel comfortable
To find your customers on social networking sites consider the following:
- Conduct a survey among your customers or potential customers.
- Analyze and monitor traffic on social sites to discover how and where customers share information about your business and your competitors.
- Review market research or statistical information on the usage and demographics of different social networking sites.
2. Participate and interact
Social media participation is a conversation, and your participation in social media groups and communities is critical to building relationships. Your value as a participant is judged by the value you bring to the community as a whole. You can achieve this by freely sharing relevant, interesting and useful information.
3. Research the activities of your competitors
You need to collect competitive information that can help your efforts. Conduct a competitive analysis of your top five competitors’ social media usage for the following:
- The social networking sites in which they actively participate.
- The type of content they post.
- The number and type of followers, fans and views.
- Products, programs or events promoted
4. Launch exclusive offers and programs from your social media channels
You must give importance to your social networks with exclusive offers for these promotional channels. This will entice potential customers to share with their networks the offer that is not available on other marketing channels.
For example, provide an exclusive offer for your social media channel, such as a coupon or discount coupon.
5. Participation in social networks requires authenticity and transparency
The words “authenticity” and “transparency” are a bit overused these days, however, these are the cornerstones of being successful with social media. Be a true human being in your interactions. This is the foundation for building trust and connections with real people in groups and social media networks.
6. Look for value opportunities in the sale through social networks
Take advantage of the opportunity to take advantage of social networks to sell your products and/or services by offering relevant articles that are of value to your followers. Make it easy for them to buy from these social media channels.
7. Always test and refine based on the results generated
Social media programs as a marketing channel are not exempt from testing and refining their messages and offers. You should put in the effort to test, collect results, and analyze how it can be improved before launching the program to the entire channel.
Apply these 7 marketing tips to using social media and get the foundation to successfully build and grow your business using these communication channels.
