Here are a few things you should keep in mind when using internet social media marketing to promote your business.
- Integrate Social Media into your Broader Marketing Strategies:
Like any marketing campaign, your social media presence needs a strategy, and this strategy cannot work in isolation of your broader marketing strategy. The lifeblood of any successful social media campaign is internal collaboration, where social media objectives and techniques must be integrated into a broader marketing plan.
- Go Global, Stay Local:
The internet has global reach and can send your brand across the oceans with very few additional costs. However, to attract and more importantly, engage your target audience in discussions, you need to identify their interests, issues and lifestyles. This requires you to have a local perspective.
- Build Your Brand Through Relationship Building:
First you need to attract readers, friends and followers by creating a buzz around your product or company. People are not interested in being advertised to, so in order to grab their attention, you could initiate discussion around current trends and hot topics. Alternatively, organize competitions, provide humor and offer freebies. Once you have built a fan base, keep them involved – respond to people promptly and regularly; provide helpful information; and continue discussions.
- Use Social Media for Customer Service:
Good customer service can significantly aid marketing. Follow up with customers, even if there are no complaints. Communicate new offers, schemes and deals to them. Social networking sites can be used to form a client community that can be used to share ideas and educational materials.
- Use Social Media to Identify Gaps:
A lot of information about your market and competition is available through social media sites. Internet social media marketing should focus on analyzing the information and identifying where your competitors fall short and you can immediately start filling the gap.