Social Media Marketing is the Future of Business
If your business is not using Arizona social media marketing strategies, you will be giving away business to your competitors. Businesses from all industries and sizes, including local service businesses, are using social media strategies to attract new customers, retain past customers and receive referrals from their raving fans. Not only is social media good for growing and maintaining your customer list, it’s also become an essential SEO component that search engines are analyzing for activity. Social media marketing is no longer an option for businesses that want to beat their competition and stay ahead of the online marketing curve.
Why Social Media is Not a Fad
Internet marketing and online promotion can be a necessary and daunting task for most businesses. Keeping up with the latest trend or “flavor of the month” marketing technique can seem like a futile exercise. In order to cut through all the noise, remember the internet is just another marketing distribution system. The message doesn’t change but the medium through which the message is communicated can shift to best target where prospects are hanging out online. Social media and social networking is not a fad and has matured as a communication channel for consumers and businesses alike. This creates a huge opportunity for your business to design and deploy online marketing campaigns that leverage the power of social media marketing to broadcast your most viral communications.
Turn Past Customers Into Your Best Sales People
If you are still not convinced of the power of social media for promoting your business and increasing sales, consider some of the staggering statistics. The average Facebook user has close to 150 friends and followers. If just one of your clients mention your business to their social network, you essentially receive 150 positive impressions.
As your social reputation increases, those 150 people can each become a point of reference for an additional 150 people and so on. The potential for viral promotion of your business name across Facebook or another social media platform can become a huge asset in your marketing arsenal. The first step is to create a platform for these viral communications to be created and past customers will become your best sales force and begin increasing your online sales reach.
Social Media Is Free
The spread of your marketing message across social media platforms is free and can greatly improve the ROI of a marketing campaign. Setting up the Arizona social media marketing campaign will take some planning and careful execution, however, the costs are considerably lower than a typical website development project. Social media websites host the web pages for you, cutting the cost of ownership and maintenance for your company. Getting started takes a little time to set-up the profiles and pages, most of the tasks can be outsourced to a digital marketing agency. Once running, the social media campaign will require maintenance to keep the conversation going and post content that will attract more followers.
Social Media has become a general term used to describe various forms of networking and content sharing sites. Here is a brief overview of the various types of social media that can be used in your Arizona social media marketing campaign…
Online Blogging Platforms
These websites allow you to create a free hosted web blog for your business. A blog can loaded with content related to your business and include articles, pictures, videos and blog posts. By linking keywords back to your website, these remote blogs can become powerful SEO tools for ranking your primary website.
Customer Review Websites
Managing your online reputation is essential to any business getting referrals online. These sites allow you to create a listing for your business and provide a way for consumers and customers to post reviews. Reviews and ratings help other potential customers to make buying decisions. Search engines are now including these review websites in search results and displaying their rating information.
Fundraising and Advocacy
Crowd funding is a popular term used for social fundraising and cause related advocacy. Philanthropy is naturally a social activity and these websites help causes gain exposure and support through social networking and sharing.
Local Event Websites
Looking for a local group of people that have similar professional interests and want to network? Local event websites allow people to join social meetings and networking groups for free. These social sites are excellent for finding local groups of people who may have an interest related to your product or service and often welcome businesses to sponsor group events and meet-ups.
Location Based Social Networks
Checking-in is a newer social activity that has gained popularity due to incentives retailers provide to users. By giving customers a reward for a check-in to your business location, it provides an opportunity to further engage with the customer and connect with others within the customer’s network. Facebook has further developed this capability and integrated it’s location based functionality with coupons and local deals.
Microblogging
Built on the premise of answering the question, “what are you doing?”, Twitter and other microblogging websites have become a popular way for followers to stay connected with new product launches and company news as it happens. Microblogs have evolved into a place where people can get information/updates from people and organizations they find interesting.
Photo Sharing
Photo sharing websites are a way to distribute logos and your company’s product images across the web. People searching for images related to your company’s products and services can find your company contact information and website links.
Social Q&A Websites
Consumers with problems to solve often post questions and look for answers on social Q&A websites. These websites are excellent mining grounds for ready-to-buy consumers and a place to position your company as a thought leader and expert in your field.
Social Bookmarking
Allows users to save, tag and share websites, with an emphasis on community and user interests. An extension of this concept can be the creation of a recommended resources for users and consumers of your company products and services. Social bookmarking websites can also be used for internal company sharing of business intelligence and research.
Social Online Gaming
Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) allow social exchange between players while playing interactive online games. Some platforms allow advertising opportunities or are played on popular social media websites such as Facebook.
Social Networks
Social networks are synonymous with social media marketing and provide the largest opportunity for consumer and B2B engagement. The pack is led by Facebook, the largest social network with wide appeal. Facebook boasts high number of daily active users. Businesses can build a fan page and claim their Facebook Places page. LinkedIn can be extremely effective for B2B businesses where employees can connect with decision makers and interact with industry groups.
Social Search
Social search combines social votes from people in your personal network with search results. For example, by connecting social sites to a Google account, Google can show relevant links that a users social connections have shared. It has been demonstrated that by getting more Google +1 votes, a website will improve it’s search ranking on Google. Bing highlights the top shared links and recent public updates on Twitter. Users can browse through popular topics or search for a topic they are interested in. Twitter allows users to search for updates, users, related images and videos shared on Twitter. It also tracks trending topics worldwide or in specific countries and cities.
Video Sharing Websites
Video sharing websites are a place where users can post, view, rate and comment on videos for free. Video sharing was made famous by YouTube which paved the way for similar websites who have enhanced the user experience. These websites can provide an online channel for companies to host videos off-page and take advantage of the large amount of traffic coming to these websites to consume video content. The more popular websites act like video search engines, providing an opportunity for video marketing and optimization.
We hope this list illustrates the large role social media can play in any service business or product business. Social media is a way to increase your company’s exposure and increase sales. Starting Arizona social media marketing can be one of the biggest challenges facing your business. Halo Effects, LLC is a social media marketing firm who can help design and develop custom social media marketing campaigns for your business. We can also decipher all of the claims a lot of marketers are making about social media and set realistic, measurable goals within your marketing budget. Social media and social networking is a necessary part of any digital marketing plan has to work in tandem with other online marketing efforts.