Social Media Marketing – What is it?

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Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing in 2013/2014 is now hopefully a mature area of marketing/communications. I’d probably call it digital marketing but some people call it this. Jumper/Sweater. It probably is different to Internet marketing which was more about the cold stats of SEO and Google Ads. It comprises in my view of search optimisation to get your website found but also to get found on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and also to get iPhone/Android mobile apps found.

It also comprises of using Social Media as a way of working with subscribers and spreading the word and keeping relationships with your Fans/Followers ticking over and finding new fans via the advocacy of existing fans. Doing all of this needs a strategy though. Without a strategy it is on-the-fly stuff which may be fun but can be very exhausting and can be hard to measure after an event.

So in bullet points:

  • Search Engine Optimisation.
  • Using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram to build and retain relationships.
  • Having a proper strategy to know where you’re going and what you did.

Search Engine Optimisation gets you found

Search Optimisation has been around for around 15 years or more and the idea is to choose the right keywords and put them in the right places on your website so the people that search using those keywords come to your website and then do something for you: buy a product, sign up to a newsletter, email you or shock horror – phone you. The same applies to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles if they’re optimised.

But Twitter, Facebook, Linked ALSO gets you found

Spreadable Media is the idea that people will share your content (be it updates, images, offers) with others on their social network. On Facebook it’s the Share option and on Twitter it’s the ReTweet button. Good content on Facebook gets shared and your name is next to it. Good content on Twitter gets retweeted. These two ways of spreading your content can get you seen by a lot more people than you are directly connected to.

This fun piece on the Mulley Facebook Page got 95 shares (even when we had only 65 Likes at the time) and got well over 8000 views of the piece. So x120 the number of fans saw the content:
Social Media Marketing - PatsyStats

Relationship Building = Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and email

Most people that come to your websites are strangers and may leave as strangers. What you want is to turn strangers into subscribers and then maybe into customers or advocates. You build relationships with them. By being useful on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and more then people may see your content and Like, Follow etc. Then as they get to know you they may tell others (Spreadable media) others too. Some tips from an old post but still relevant: C Words: Creative, consistent, constructive, community-minded and use case studies And also Be useful , Be interesting, Be first , Be around, Be supportive.

Social Media Content Creation

It’s been repeated a lot but by creating content for people then you can get leads via search engines but also leads via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Always be thinking about creating content and whether something would make a good blog post, Facebook update, Tweet.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

You don’t have to have a strategy to do well in social media but if you do, you may find success faster and it would be more efficient. There are plenty of businesses that through tactics have done quite well on social media but as people see how they did these things may copy them and everyone has an equal footing again. If you set out your goals you can better plan out how to achieve them with the resources you have. A hugely important part of this is knowing your customer and if you have the time, researching your customers and potential customers can make your marketing more efficient. This fairly elaborate Digital Marketing Plan can help a good bit with planning out your social media marketing.

And Mulley Communications helps you with this through doing consultancy with you or you can attend some of our Digital Marketing Courses.

This course is now over but If you want to be informed of when the next Social Media Courses/Digital Marketing Courses are, please fill in this form.