“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we Do it”
Social Media Marketing is a trend that has captured the world and has become one of the most powerful methods of online marketing. Social media marketing is the term used to describe the processs of getting traffic or attention by use of social media sites. Companies and businesses of all sizes use social media sites to create buzz, get knowlege of customer likes and target their customers. The use of social media marketing for your business has one big benefit of having your brand showing more on Google searches. In this article we shall look at some of the general principles of online social media marketing and show best ways of using the social media sites.
Why You Should Use Social Media Sites
We all know that the telephone has the technological capacity to connect you to any person you like in the world provided that they decide to take your call and allow you enough time to talk to them. Generally , people are hesitant to answer calls from people they don’t recognize. People always want to deal with people they know, people with whom they have a relationship. When the relationship is a “trusted relationship”, people will listen to you more carefully. It is a well known fact that it is very easy to close a deal with a potential customer when you’ve been introduced to him by a person they know and trust. You cannot have the time to build trusted relationships with all potential customers, but when you have built relationships with certain key people, they may in turn introduce you to the many potential customers with whom they have built trusted relationships. Once you have been introduced to them by people they trust, you can enjoy the benefit of trust.
According to the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, at any particular time, a person can maitain a close, inter-personal relationship with only about 150 people. This is known as the “Dunbar’s Number.” This number which is based on the social capacity of the human brain, applies to close and stable relationships. You can build trusted social and business relationships with many more people provided you don’t attach emotions in your relationship. A group of people which is very closely tied emotionally will definitely be small and vice versa.
The Essence Of Social Media Marketing
To be able to form a trusted relationship, you need to be connected by a person who is trusted. Getting membership in a group is a good way of creating trusted trelationships. Even if a person doesn’t know you, they will give you the benefit of doubt when they know that you are in one or more than one group to which they belong. The same holds when you are introduced by a common friend. Being introduced by a friend of your friend is like being in the same group. So, in forming trusted relationships, it’s who you know , who they know and which groups you associate with that are important. Least, you remain with the 150 or less people with whom you have close relationships a number which is very small for business marketing purposes. And, this is the essence of what social media marketing is all about.
When you first come to the social media arena, nobody knows you. It is like going to a social gathering or a party for the first time where nobody knows you. You have to come back several times and make conversations with people before they start telling their friends about you. And this is the ultimate goal of social media marketing, to have friends who will tell their friends about you.
How do you get friends who will tell their friends about you? Let’s suppose you went to the party and started telling people to spend their money on a business opportunity. If they wouldn’t understand you at the party in real life, the same applies to the social media platforms. You need to convince people that you are a valuable asset that their businesses will benefit from collaboarting with. You need to share with them valuable information using your blog, images, music, vidoeos, email and through group discussions. The main idea is to help your prospects get exactly what they want and need for free. Slowly you will build trusted relationships with your prospects.
Now when you have started sharing great information with people on the social media sites, they will start sharing the information with people they know so that they are considered trusted resources. When people share your information to other people they know, you definitely have become a trusted resource for them and they will have to come back for more. You have obviously gained their trust.
” A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is – it is what customers tell each other it is.”
How To Use Social Media Sites
When approached properly, social media sites can be very useful in building your business. It is recommended that you take some time to create an interesting and comprehensive profile, picking a username that will be consistent across all the social media sites. The ultimate goal is to have a large number of friends with interests similar to yours. Try to be selective in adding friends at first. Be conservative at accepting friend requests, pick them rather than them pick you. Newcomers to social media sites are taken as prey by predators. Remember the people you will ask to be your friends will judge you by the quality of friends you already have, if you have a bunch of undesirable friends you will be rejected by the more desirable friends later on just because of that.
Always remember that social media sites are NOT advertising sites, just the way we saw you cannot go to a social gathering and start telling people about your business. They are a place to make friends who will tell their friends about what you are doing and how they can benefit by associating themselves with you. While on the social media sites, find ways of getting your prospects’ email addresses to build your email list. Continue to give them more valuable informaton to maintain that level of trust using social media sites and your personal email list. The use of a personal email list facilitates the delivery of information better than using the social media platforms. If you over-deliver using your list, they will stay with you for a long time.
In this article we have seen that social media marketing is one of the best ways of marketing your business. We have seen the importance of bulding trust and how to do it using social media sites. We also cited on the best practices of using the social media sites. To get an understanding of other methods you could utilize for your online marketing campaigns, read my other article at “Best Internet Marketing Techniques“.
Feel free to leave your comments on the above topic, I”ll be more than happy to reply.
Laurian.