So what is social media marketing anyways?
Traditional advertising is costly and these days it doesn’t seem to be very effective. So what are the alternatives if you don’t have a large budget for advertising but want to let people know about your brand, business etc.
The answer to this dilemma is Social Media. So what is Social Media anyway? Social Media is a term used to reference sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and more.
Currently there are 12,381,640 Canadians on Facebook. Statistics Canada’s population clock estimates that the total population of Canada is 33,760,010.
That’s a significant amount of Canadians on this one social network. This does not take into account the number of people spending their time on social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Blogs etc…
Based on all the statistics it’s very apparent that social media is here to stay and is not just a fad. So as a business how do you advertise or market yourself in these sites? It’s through social media marketing.
Then what is social media marketing?
Marketing is about building relationships and social media tools help you achieve this in an online world. Social media marketing is about using sites like Facebook, YouTube et. to create awareness and credibility about a brand. This is indirectly translated to growing revenues for your business.
These sites are free however it’s very important to
- tie your business goals into your participation in these spaces
- not spam your audience
- use these sites the the way they were inende, entertainment
- start a dialogue with your customers (build relationships)
- incorporate this into your business processes
Participation online takes time, effort and consistency. If you are spending time online building your business then take time to track your efforts and tie this into your website analytics.
So before you participate in social media start paying attention to who is visiting your website and where they are coming from. This will give you a baseline to start from. Then track the difference between the traffic to your website before and after your participation in social media.Tweak this as you go.
Flickr Photostream
