08 Oct Purposes and goals: social media marketing

This is a question that every new business owner asks themselves as they are setting up their new business. Should I use social media to promote my products or services? And if so, what platforms should I use and how can I cut through the clutter of social media to get results from my social media endeavours?

I am currently actually not that well qualified to answer those questions specifically. But I feel like I could give you some general information that might help you with the process of possibly choosing social media platforms and engaging with your audience.

Social media can be tricky. Some organisations do it really well and are wildly successful, but for others, it can feel like it can be hard to get any traction with social media. You might have accounts that are idle, or that you use and do not get much attention.

Next year, hopefully, I will study a subject devoted to social media and video marketing. I can’t wait! There are some general principles though, that might be helpful to you!

What are your goals?

I was thinking about this last night as I opened my fizBITS twitter account and pondered my seven followers. I have not really started any social media accounts for fizBITS so far. The website isn’t even finished yet! But I did think last night that when you are thinking of implementing a social media plan, it can be useful to think about what you want to achieve.

It is so easy to spin your wheels with social media. To post every day and link to your site, and never really get anywhere. Much less find any new clients or customers in the process. I think it is very important to understand that social media is absolutely useless unless it identifies new leads for your business. It should assist people on their journey towards becoming your clients and customers.

Best use of time

When you are considering this, it might be helpful to know that there are other forms of marketing that might use your time and money more effectively than social media. Email marketing is one example, and in future posts, I can help you to do that successfully. But there are other alternatives – something like Adwords comes to mind. Adwords can help to direct targeted customers to strong landing pages which can move them through your sales funnel and closer to the prospect of becoming a customer. Or you could consider mass media advertising as another option. It really just depends on your business and what avenues for marketing are going to get you the best results.

Adwords and advertising involves an investment of money, and social media and email marketing require an investment in time, which may make it SEEM as though it is cheaper, but your time is not really free. I am not suggesting for a moment that you shouldn’t spend time working ON your business, but this post is a good example of the kind of work, which is supportive and secondary to those actual billable hours that can put food on your table.

SOCIAL media

You might think that I am being overly mercenary, and that social media is actually SOCIAL in it’s intention. I have personal social media accounts that serve the purpose of being social with my friends, but as soon as I devote work hours and effort to the endeavour, it needs to actually pay off in terms of achieving my goals.

For now, I just want you to start to think strategically with regard to your social media activities. If you do choose to do it, what are your specific goals? What are you planning to achieve? And what kind of content would be useful in finding new leads, and gradually moving them towards becoming loyal customers?

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and the rest

As much as I do think that your specific goals should guide your approach to social media. It is also important to be consistent and if you dedicate half an hour a day to posting on your social media accounts, this could be a very useful investment of your time. Try to post content that provides some VALUE to your target audience and helps to solve their problems. This is the best advice I can give you. I do think it is important to me to have a platform to share with people the useful content from your website. And to gradually develop an ecosystem of marketing, that will benefit your business.

To see how I build a social media presence, or to connect with me on social media, please follow me on my Facebook page – Fizbits Web Design, or on my favourite – Twitter @fizBITSweb. It is exciting! Get in touch 🙂

To your success!!