Despite the buzz that seems to be everywhere about social media, the truth is that social media is not single-handedly likely to turn your company around, make you a millionaire or send your sales skyrocketing. Social media is a tool, in the same way, that public relations, events, radio ads, and direct mail are marketing tools.
Just like tools in your garage, some marketing tools are better suited for certain uses than others. In the hand of a master craftsman, a humble hammer can be used to craft out an expensive piece of custom furniture. The outcome depends on the skill of the user and the desired end result, although the tools are the same.
For a small group of“master” social media, this has been a path to fame and fortune. Many of those high-profiled social media stars actually came to social media with well-established and very large opt-in email lists, an established product line, a schedule of national speaking engagements, and the benefits of being among the first in an emerging medium. In another word, social media amplified the success they had already built elsewhere.
In reality, there’s still an “if you build it well, they will come”. The more you understand how social media works and the better you are able to craft out sites and deliver content that perfectly fits your targeted audience, the more successful you will be. Alas, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, even with this current hype in social media.
Here, I have listed down what social media can and what it can’t do for your business.
What Social Media Can Do
- raise your visibility to clients and prospects
- help you stay in touch more easily and with more frequency
- enable you to connect with people all around the world at fraction of the cost as compared with traditional promotional methods.
- improve your search engine visibility
- increase the likelihood of successfully connecting with reporters, bloggers, and reviewers who may endorse your products
- introduce new prospects to your sales funnel and build up your opt-in list
What Social media Can’t Do
- sell a product that is of poor quality or poorly positioned in the marketplace.
- make you an overnight millionaire
- force people to buy a product that doesn’t meet their needs
- make up for a poorly designed Website
- guarantee your story will get picked up for front-page coverage in a big-name publication
- cannot draw prospects’ attention if the message isn’t relevant
So, when used strategically with good quality content and careful audience targetting, social media becomes a cost-effective, highly personal, adaptable, and relevant way to achieve all of the above goals. Social media works most effectively when it’s backed up by strong online and offline marketing programs. For example, it won’t help much even if your social media sites are doing a good job of driving traffic to your website if your website is poorly designed and could not convert them to buyers or opt-in subscribers. That’s why it’s so important to have a good website, an opt-in newsletter with free bonuses like an Ebook or Free audio or video to entice prospects to opt-in or to convert them to customers.
With the advent of social media, it is now expected for businesses as it is for companies to have a website. Many consumers today would think twice about doing business with a company that didn’t have some kind of website. As more and more consumers begin to use social media as a regular part of their daily routine and personal interaction, if your business or company is not into social media, this will be a great disadvantage for you.
Moreover, social media is also one of the lowest costs to network your product, your business, or your company on a global scale around the clock. Through downloads of audio, video, Ebook, etc, social media can provide product sampling, and product reviews while at the same time heightening your credibility and visibility.
That’s all for now, friends. See you all in my next articles.