Thinking Smart about Social Media Marketing for Small Business

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Those who have been reading my blog for a while know my mantra when it comes to effective bootstrap small business marketing — Think like your customer!

For example, since not every type of customer looks to the web for information, not every business necessarily needs a web page.  The same limitation holds true for social media.  It only works if it is where your customers for information.

Even if websites or any of the new media sources out there are the right way to reach your customers, you still need to be clear about your intention with any form of promotion.  What do you want your customers to do at your website?  What do you want them to do with your use of social media promotion?  Bootstrappers can’t just throw a bunch of marketing stuff to the wall with their promotion and hope something sticks.  You have to be intentional in what you do with any form of promotion.

And finally, keep in mind that their are probably a billion websites out there and almost as many people trying to use social media to get business.  You can’t just build it and they will come.  You need a strategy to get people to notice your message and push them to act.

Gene Marks offers his thoughts on using social media:

We’ve been misled as to the benefits of social networking sites. Many of us are finding that these tools do not live up to the hype, especially for small business. Once we start digging deeper, we’re finding a lot of challenges.

Marks discusses five myths about the use and effectiveness of social media for promotion.  This is a good read for anyone currently trying to use social media or thinking about using it.

Social media can be an effective tool.  But, you need to understand if it works for your customers.  If it does make sense as a tool for your target market, the next step is to determine how best to make social media a productive part of your promotional mix.

Marks is not out to prove that the new media people are using to promote their businesses do not work.  There are many examples of the effective use of Twitter for marketing and businesses built through sites like Facebook.

In fact, I can guarantee that he understands that the new media can be effective if used properly.  After all, his public relations person nagged me long enough to get me to blog about his article!

In general the answer to this question is always but the answer is much more involved. Sure cyberspace marketing is worthwhile but as with any type of marketing it is only worthwhile if it is done well. For example you crapper spend thousands of dollars on a television marketing crusade but if no one sees your commercials or your commercials do not reach your direct conference and generate sales, the advertising was not worthwhile. So perhaps a more appropriate answer to this question would be that cyberspace marketing is worthwhile when it works. This is a rather vague statement but this article module investigate the issue further and vindicate how you crapper attain cyberspace marketing work for your business.

One of the most base principles of marketing is to attain sure you reach your direct audience. This is so important because your direct conference is the people who are most likely going to be interested in purchasing your products or services. It is much easier to sell your products or services to those who already have an interest in the products and services you have to offer than it is to convince those who are not interested in your products or services at all. As an example consider a playing who sells fishing rods. You module want to market your products to those who enjoy fishing either competitively or as a leisure activity because among this conference you are likely to find people who may be interested in purchasing a new fishing rod. It would attain sense to place an advertizing for your playing on a website selling bait and tackle or a website which organizes fishing trips in exotic locations. Conversely it would not attain sense to place your advertizing on a website selling telescopes because you are not likely to reach a large direct conference here. There may be some stargazers with an interest in fishing but your advertising dollars and efforts would be better spent placing advertisements with websites more closely attendant to your business.

Another factor to consider when purchasing advertising space on another cyberspace website is traffic the amount of traffic the another website receives. This is significant because you want to place your advertizing on a website which is closely attendant to your possess and likely to attract a similar conference but you also want your advertizing to receive a large amount of attention. For this think it is important for your advertizing to appear on a website which receives a great amount of traffic apiece month. This module help to ensure your playing is getting a great deal of exposure finished this advertising.

When it comes to cyberspace advertising, there is a fine line between great advertising and spam. Some playing owners get carried away disagreeable to get as much exposure as possible and crapper sometimes go overboard and wind up being considered spam. cyberspace users who see your advertizing in a couple of key locations module likely notice the advertizing and may be compelled to visit your website immediately or may keep your website in mind for future use. However, cyberspace users who see your advertizing everywhere they look are likely to analyse your advertizing as spam. This crapper be bruising because they are not likely to visit your website because they expect it to not be worthwhile.

In any online marketing crusade it is important to carefully monitor the results of your marketing efforts and attain changes to your crusade as necessary. This is important because you want to attain sure your marketing efforts are paying off and the best way to do this is to evaluate the results of your advertising carefully. One way to do this is to place specially coding in apiece one of your advertisements so you module know which advertisements are generating playing for you and which ones are not. You crapper use this aggregation to end whether you should modify the ineffective website or stop running these advertisements. If you end to modify them you module want to continue to monitor the results to determine whether or not the changes made the advertisements more effective.