Social Media Marketing – why your business needs it!

Never before has the ordinary person had the opportunity to potentially reach a worldwide audience. Now they can using social media  for online marketing

Is your business participating in the online conversation about your products and services?

Social media and social networking sites bring people together online that share a common interest. The improvement in the technology used to contribute to social media has allowed ordinary people to make their opinions heard. People take the opportunity offered by the social networking sites to express their desires, activities, expertise and opinions. Never before has the ordinary person had the opportunity to potentially reach a worldwide audience. This fact has not been missed by smart businesses, who are looking at the opportunities to promote their products and services online with social media marketing.

Individuals can choose from blog, photo, video, diary and information and expertise sites to share their information. Even if they are not supplying information directly they can still influence the distribution of information by social bookmarking and sharing of news as it breaks. Keeping up to date in conversations is easy because the updates are done in real-time. Many sites such as Twitter are virtually instantaneous.

Whatever way you look at it, social media is about relationships. Social media is also different than traditional media in that people can contribute as much or as little as they want in their own time, by creating their own content and broadcast it.

The key features of social media networking are:

1. Truth:

Social media revolves around unfiltered, sincere information coming straight from people and businesses around the world. Successful social media relies on authenticity and is an essential part of any social media marketing campaign for business who values their online reputation.

2. Transparency:

Businesses can communicate directly with the public to explain their positions and policies regarding the whole spectrum of development, customer relations, goals and objectives as well as branching out into wider global issues. By sharing this information they help to create a positive relationship with their customers.

3. Real-time publishing:

The information is published online straight away, making it available to a worldwide audience within moments. As technology advances rapidly in this field, contributing to the online conversation becomes even easier to as updating a blog, social page, community or website is user friendly. Adding a comment or product review is literally the push of a button.

4. Accountability:

Companies involved in social media marketing must make sure that the behaviour of the company online must be above reproach, through training, company. With participation in social media, the company moves into the arena where they can no longer just postulate an ethical approach to business, they must also follow it if they wish to retain a positive reputation, and gain the trust of the online community.

5. Participation:

Visitors can contribute to the business’s blog, social network page customer service and FAQ’s. They can add comments and opinions. This is often represented by uncensored product reviews, and is seen to be an excellent marketing strategy by the companies involved. The visitor enjoys the unprecedented experience of allowing their opinions to be heard and influence the actions of others.

Social media and social networking are widely believed to be the future of digital marketing. The power is placed in the hands of the people and, quite rightly, they are not going to let it go! Frankly, if you are in business but are ignoring the role played by social media, especially by not monitoring it, you are guilty of neglecting to take control of your online reputation. You are running the risk of allowing others to say what they like about you without responding. This paints a very poor picture of your company, and your very silence on topics that others feel are important enough to mention, will damage your online reputation.

Will it damage your sales too?