Social bookmarking. Social networking. Blogging. Microblogging. Are
you using them all in your social media marketing efforts? What about
online video, content aggregators, podcasts, social media news releases,
forums, and photo sharing? Some people would have you believe that you
should be engaged in all, or most, of these social media tools and
tactics to promote your business. Those people are wrong.
Why it Doesn’t Pay to be an Early Adopter
It’s a common marketing misconception that businesses should take
advantage of every tool available to them if using that tool could
potentially attract new visitors, readers, or customers. While there’s
nothing wrong with testing new tools, attempting to try everything may
cost more than you’d think (in wasted time), especially if you insist on
being one of the first.
When a new social media tool is released, early adopters rush in.
From a marketing perspective, being an early adopter is not a smart
business move for most businesses. Why? Unless large numbers of your
particular target market are also early adopters already using the tool,
you’re not going to reach your market by jumping on board. Your
marketing message has to reach your actual market. If they’re not there
yet, there are more productive ways to spend your (or your employees’)
time.
The All-Important ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is one of the most important business
concepts out there. In essence, when you maximize your ROI you’re
getting as much as you can out of as little as possible.
You could invest a little bit of that budget into every social media
tool you can think of. For example, you might produce a very low-budget
video to release on YouTube, hire a part-time blogger to update your
company blog and respond to comments, put out one or two social media
news releases, hire a forum poster to visit communities to link to your
website, and hire someone to help you setup social media and
microblogging accounts (such as with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter).
When you try to do too much, your budget is stretched. That video may
be much poorer quality than you would have liked. You may get a handful
of blog posts for the month instead of a blogger who can post daily and
build a real community around your blog. You may have social networking
profiles and a Twitter account, but you may not have anyone to
constantly update them.
It’s far better to strike a balance. you’ll have a populated blog attracting links and readers
naturally, a free download which will attract even more links and
visitors naturally, and a news release helping to give that tool’s
launch an edge by promoting it to other bloggers and members of your
target market. The key is the cohesiveness–finding tools and tactics
that work well collectively to reach your marketing goals.
Knowing When Enough is Enough
Sometimes trying to get more, or do more, will actually give you
less. That’s very true in social media marketing and jumping on the hype
of new tools (many of which are fads that die down significantly in
just a few months to a few years).
Target your social media marketing campaign not only to tools that
actually reach your audience right now, but also to tools that will give
you the best return on the time or money you sink in. Your social media
marketing plan won’t necessarily look like anyone else’s. Even the most
talked-about tool may not be right for your company, your budget, or
your potential visitors and customers.
Remember that tried and true marketing strategies have earned that
reputation for a reason. Don’t sacrifice promotional efforts that are
already successful for your company to pursue new tools that may have a
heavy learning curve (meaning more time invested) unless your market
research tells you that tool or tactic can work even better than what
you’re already doing.
It’s okay to try social media tools as they’re released. Just never forget to find out how your customers are using those tools before you invest in them solely for fear of being left behind.
http://bosmol.com/2011/12/social-media-marketing-%E2%80%93-a-revolution revisited.html#.TzOj1siycg8
http://www.webprofits.com.au/social-media-marketing.html
http://www.wizmarketings.com/social-media-marketing/
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