When is social media important?

Social media is human to human marketing, which makes it a powerful means of attracting prospects and building enduring customer relationships. It’s particularly useful if you are looking to:

  • Build awareness of your brand, campaigns, and website
  • Spread brand messaging and content
  • Increase the credibility of your business
  • Showcase yourself as a thought leader in your market or industry
  • Produce regular content for your website
  • Monitor brand sentiment and influence
  • Influence search engine ranking

Social media is also important for those who are looking to actively engage with their customers. It can be used to:

  • Get detailed demographic intelligence about your audience
  • Generate prospective customers
  • Create, maintain, and strengthen customer relationships
  • Regularly connect with customers, vendors, and partners
  • Get feedback from customers
  • Provide active customer service
Social Media Platform How can it be used?
Facebook
  • Targets individuals
  • Allows for direct engagement with customers
  • Is all encompassing – most other social media platforms can be linked to your business’s Facebook account
  • Is useful for events/promotions, PR, content promotion, and customer service
LinkedIn
  • Allows you to reach professionals, thus creating a network of potential clients, vendors, and partners
  • Automatically pulls in information shared elsewhere about your company once the company page is set up
  • Allows for the creation of individual product or service landing pages
  • Makes it possible to secure reviews of your business, services, and products
Twitter
  • Able to network by following relevant people and businesses
  • Can provide a “face” for your company
  • Allows customers to provide feedback
  • Is useful for PR, opinion polling, and customer service
YouTube
  • Increases your authority through uploaded presentations and helpful tips
  • Able to interact with users by responding to comments
  • Allows for the promotion of your business via the posting of tutorials, product demos, entertaining videos, commercials, event promos, interviews, etc.
foursquare
  • Creates great brand recognition and builds buzz for retail and dining establishments
  • Is useful for connecting with local customers

There are many other social media platforms that might also be appropriate for your business, like Pinterest, Flickr, Meetup, Ning, and StumbleUpon, as well as Q&A platforms like Yahoo! Answers and discussion forums tailored to every industry and topic.

Every business is different, so the social media strategy must be crafted on a case-by-case basis. The platforms that you opt to use will also depend upon whether you’ll do the work in-house or outsource it, as well as the time and commitment you’re willing to spend on social media.

Contact us now for a free internet marketing consultation.