its hundreds of millions of users.
In fact, sometimes you have to craft a campaign just to build an audience on a particular social media site. The process is similar to conducting optimization and inbound link campaigns so that your site is found in natural search results.
By far, the biggest downside in social media is the amount of time you need to invest to see results. You need to make an ongoing commitment to review and respond to comments and to provide an ongoing stream of new material. An initial commitment to set up a profile is just the tip of the iceberg.
As you consider each of the social media options in this book, also consider the level of human resources that is needed. Do you have the time and talents yourself? If not, do other people in your organization have the time and talent? Which other efforts will you need to give up while making room for social media? Will you have to hire new employees or contract services, leading to hard costs for this supposedly “free” media?
Integrating Social Media into Your Overall Marketing Effort
Social media is only part of your online marketing. Online marketing is only part of your overall marketing. Don’t mistake the part for the whole.
Consider each foray into social marketing as a strategic choice to supplement your other online-marketing activities, which may include
Creating and managing a marketing-effective website: Use content updates, search engine optimization (SEO), inbound link campaigns, and event calendar postings to your advantage.
Displaying your product’s or service’s value: Create online press releases and email newsletters. Share testimonials and reviews with your users and offer affiliate or loyalty programs, online events, or promotions.
Advertising: Take advantage of pay-per-click ads, banners, and sponsorships.
Use social media strategically to
Meet an otherwise unmet marketing need.
Increase access to your target market.
Open the door to a new niche market.
Move prospects through the conversion funnel.
Improve the experience for existing customers.
For example, the website for Fluid IT Services (www.fluiditservices.com) links to its Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn sites, as well as its blog (www.fluiditservices.com/blog), to attract its audience. For more information on overall online marketing, see Stephanie Diamond’s book, Digital Marketing All-In-One For Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
To get the maximum benefit from social media, you must have a hub site, the site to which web traffic will be directed, as shown in Figure 1-9. With more than 2 billion websites online, you need social media as a source of traffic. Your hub site can be a full website or a blog, as long as the site has its own domain name. It doesn’t matter where the site is hosted — only that you own its name, which appears as www.yourcompany.com or http://blog.yourcompany.com. Though you can link to http://yourcompany.wordpress.com, you can’t effectively optimize or advertise a WordPress address like this. Besides, it doesn’t look professional to use a domain name from a third party.
Consider doing some sketching for your own campaign: Create a block diagram that shows the relationship between components, the flow of content between outlets, and perhaps even the criteria for success and how you’ll measure those criteria.
Courtesy of Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing: www.watermelonweb.com
FIGURE 1-9: All social media channels and other forms of online marketing interconnect with your hub website.
Developing a Strategic Social Media Marketing Plan
Surely you wrote an overall marketing plan when you last updated your business plan and an online-marketing plan when you first created your website. If not, it’s never too late! For business planning resources, see the Starting a Business page at www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/starting-business.
You can further refine a marketing plan for social media marketing. As with any other marketing plan, you start with strategy. A Social Media Marketing Goals statement (Figure 1-10 shows an example) would incorporate sections on strategic goals, objectives, target markets, methods, costs, and return on investment (ROI).
You can download the form on this book’s website (www.dummies.com/go/socialmediamarketingaio5e) and read more about ROI in Book 1, Chapter 2.
Here are some points to keep in mind when putting together your strategic marketing overview:
The most important function of the form isn’t for you to follow it slavishly, but rather to force you to consider the various facets of social media marketing before you invest too much effort or money. Courtesy of Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing: www.watermelonweb.comFIGURE 1-10: Establish your social-marketing goals, objectives, and target market definition on this form.
The form also helps you communicate decisions to your board of advisors
