Social Media : Not Replacement but another way to reach your Customers!

Day by day Social media becomes stronger as its follower increases in many fold per day. Companies can not neglect this social media presence further more, as you have more benefits than normal advertisement and formal way of communication.

Following are the benefits for Business:

1) Cheaper

2) Easy, accessible, user friendly for customers.

3) Customers/user already their, you don't have to take effort to add them.

4) Word of Mouth is more stronger & Faster in Social Media

5) Its providing an additional channel for customer support

6) Broadcasting updates, announcements, news, e.g. additional PR resource

7) Promotions

8) Behind the scenes look at the organization

9) Advertising

10) Reach to your internal customers i.e. employee without any barrier.

11) Allows the organization to measure and monitor the effects on their customers.

12) Organizations are able to target individuals based upon specific interests shared on social media.

Social Media helps your other integrated marketing efforts. It Should act in parallel way. Suppose you are launching new product -you gave its TV commercial, Advertisement in print media, Radio jingles, or other marketing ways so to boost its overall effectiveness if you add it in Youtube, Facebook wall, Twitter etc. You can able to create unison, one directional, clutter free promotion for your product.

Social Media Challenges:

1) Regular updation is necessary

2) Content should be relevant to customers

3) If you are using it for complaint forum then you have to solve as much as complaint else it acts like a Boomrang.

4) Keeping Fan following

5) Everyone want new, unique, true information.

Also remember just like with other marketing initiatives—social media efforts can succeed or fail. So be sure & clear what is your goal & how you will going to perform.

So if you till away from it......then its time to have presence on Social Media.

5 Tips to Become Successful Social Media Marketer (SMM).

How good would it be to overhear customers talking to each other and saying nice things about your company? Or how important is it to know when dissatisfied customers are telling others about a poor experience? If you’re monitoring social media, you’re gathering exactly that information.

Customers and prospects are increasingly turning to social communities, networks and blogs for opinions about various brands, businesses and services. In 2009, the average time spent on social sites increased 82 percent globally compared to 2008 and the number of Twitter users spiked more than 500 percent, reaching 75 million by the end of 2009. Because recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted online are trusted most, monitoring and managing social media is a key focus among marketers. As with increase email marketing, measuring your performance in social is key to success, enabling you to monitor the impact of promotions, identify brand ambassadors and adjust future campaigns based on past results, among numerous other benefits

Here are some tips for to do it right:

1)    Identify your market.

What is your market? It is very important as in social media you can focus on part of your target market. Also it decides which social media is useful in selected market. As Like in India you can use Orkut over facebook (but rapidly user of Facebook increases and it will cross Orkut in short time.)

2)    What is your goal for SMM?

It decides your course of use of social media. Whether you are going to use twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut, Netlog etc. or combination of all or some of it. Goal helps you in remain focus & measure the path of success. Everywhere goal is very important as it boost your confident, it help to focus on limited/selective targets.

Also in B2B and B2C different media are more useful like for B2B Social media like Linkedin, Blogs, slideshare, Twitter is more important while in B2C Youtube, Facebook, twitter etc. are more favorable.

3)    How you going to measure/monitor its impact?

This is most important step in social media marketing because it helps to remain focus, consistent & remain on designed path. It is very much possible in case of Social media as you can count no. of hits, most favorite tweet, and direct customer feedback/suggestions using various tools/applications. Which is why social media is become favorite among marketers!. By measuring impact of social media you can make necessary corrections.

4)    Engage customers/prospect in discussion.

This step is actually part of implementation phase of social media marketing. Engage your prospect/customer in various discussions. Sometimes if you contradict or giving some super nominal result or fact, force customer to take part in discussion but it should be use carefully or else it affect other way to your social media campaigning.

5)    Consistency / focus.

This step is more important as you are using more ways to reach your customer/prospect so there is possibility of difference, inconsistency in your message. Also this is case when different marketing channel handled by different people/departments. Also social media reach directly to the doorstep of customer and in case SMM, customer gets enough time to evaluate, accept the message. So message should be clear and consistent to other mediums of communication.

So if you follow all this steps in SMM, nobody keeps you away from becoming successful Social Media Marketer. So when you starting/using your Social media marketing (SMM)?

Facebook as a Marketing Tool......

Yes, we can use facebook as a marketing tool. How read following different features provided by facebook.Business can use it all or some for their marketing actvities. Also day by day Facebook users are increasing so you just can't ignore it.

Facebook Public Profile

A Facebook Public Profile is an ideal place for businesses to establish a beachhead within the social network. It is, also, one of the most overlooked.Businesses can set up a Public Profile at no cost.You can send regular updates to fans, and, unlike personal profiles, which are limited to 5,000 members, the number of fans you can have on a Public Profile is unlimited. In addition, you can set up a business page without having to provide a personal profile.

Facebook Events

Another useful Facebook feature, one that can be launched directly from your Facebook Public Profile, is Facebook Events. With it, you can let fans and others know about upcoming events and activities your business will be hosting.

Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups allow you to create or participate in as many as 200 affinity- or geography-based groups. Each can serve as a viral channel for extending your presence within Facebook, and each can be used as "fishing pools" to help you find prospects and build relationships. Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads resemble Google AdSense ads in that they are primarily text based, but they do allow inclusion of a small graphic.

Facebook Apps

One of the first things you'll notice when you begin participating in Facebook is the bevy of widgets (what Facebook refers to as "applications," or "apps" for short). The apps, created by third-party developers, number into the scores of thousands and cover every conceivable category, from games to music to travel to just plain fun (and just plain stupid).

Facebook Lexicon

Lexicon is Facebook's answer to Google's Zeitgeist. It is a tool you can use to spot and compare trends inside the network. In Lexicon, you input single words or two-word combinations and compare as many as five strings per query to mine and analyze millions of Facebook Wall posts.

Facebook Share

Facebook Share is a small button or hyperlink you can add to your website that lets visitors share the site with their friends on Facebook. Essentially, it's a way to drive traffic.

Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect is the next evolution of the Facebook platform. It provides a way for members to log in to other websites using their Facebook account and "connect" their Facebook identity, friends, and privacy settings to those sites.

Personal Profile

In social media, people relate better to other people than to brands. Face(book) it: We like to do business with people we know and trust.An ideal scenario is to have a brand or company presence via the means outlined above, and to supplement and extend that business presence with a personal one.

What benefits can be accrued?

Quite a few: brand awareness, personal engagement with your customers and prospects, a network that allows fans to easily and quickly share your message, and inexpensive advertising to boot. What's not to like?

Reference : "Yes, Facebook Is a Business Tool", by Paul Chaney