subject: Social Media Marketing Your Goal Set? [print this page] For many small businesses, investing money in social media is just not a viable option; finances are earmarked for different uses, and spending that much cash on social media marketing becomes a last resort, despite the fact that digital marketing is the new frontier.
Luckily for such businesses, social media doesnt always have to be expensive and the opportunity cost isnt always exorbitant. What matters most for such small companies is the capacity to come up with effective strategies, and the ability to implement and execute these marketing techniques.
One of the most important ways to get started on your social media marketing campaign is to set clear goals for yourself. Where do you want to be in three months? How are you planning to advertise your project? Which mediums do you need? Who is your target audience? What will your main focus be? How will you measure success which statistics will you use to determine how well your campaign is going? Or will you judge it by quality of interaction and content? These are all important questions, and you should map out a basic idea of what you want from your campaign by judging the answers to your questions. The best way to have a successful social media marketing campaign is to understand what you want from it.
The three social media websites used most commonly as marketing tools are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The most important website for Social Media Marketing is, without a doubt, Facebook. If you do not have an account so far, get one as soon as possible; your social media campaign absolutely cannot succeed without presence on Facebook. This is because Mark Zuckerbergs brainchild has more users than any other social media platform, and therefore gives you a great base of customers to tap into.
Another important, effective way in which Facebook can help you interact with your users is that it is immensely user friendly. It is one of the few social media websites which almost everyone uses, because it is easy to understand. This makes it the ideal platform for basic social media marketing, ensuring that your message is delivered across a wide spectrum of people with no cost.
Secondly, Facebook is highly interactive. It allows you to form rapports with your fan base with easy-to-view pictures, posts and many other customizable tabs according to the kind of business you want to advertise. Secondly, Facebook has complete transparency. You can examine the social media marketing strategies of any of your direct competitors to determine which techniques they are using, and how they attempt to use social media in order to influence their own audience. You can analyze their posts, as well as the general response given by clients to understand what users and fans expect from you as a brand; if there is something your competitor is missing out on, for example, you can fill in this gap by making sure that your own social media strategy includes an aspect which covers the one which your competition is neglecting.
