When social media was new on the scene, people were vary about it. They stayed away from it.
As it became more mainstream, businesses began wondering if it was a magical pill that would solve all their marketing problems. So, they began dipping their toes in.
Turns out, it isn’t a magic pill, and it didn’t solve all their marketing problems overnight. Many of them retreated promising themselves never to use it again. Others sort of figured out how to use it, and what it should be used for.
While it won’t solve all your marketing problems, it is a real and a measurable solution.
Done right, social media marketing can:
- Increase brand awareness
- Give your brand an organic, human feel
- Allow you to tune in to what’s being said about your brand
- Facilitate word-of-mouth marketing
- Give you an immediate medium for customer and potential customer communication
- Increase customer loyalty
- Build consumer trust.
Here’s the argument I often get after I lay these points out … Well, if it’s that good, and can do all those things, why haven’t we seen the results?
Two reasons.
- You haven’t given it enough time to produce the results.
- You haven’t used it correctly.
It’s like farming. You plant your crops in spring, do the work throughout the summer, and then you only expect the harvest to come in fall.
After planting, if you keep taking the seed out every two weeks to check if it’s growing or not, it’s never going to grow. And, if you don’t plant it well, or water it enough, it’s not going to produce the crop you desired.
Social media marketing works much of the same way. It’s not a magic pill that creates overnight results. It takes time to build authority, and done right can pay dividends for years to come.
Some questions you ought to ask about your social media marketing efforts:
- What am I trying to achieve with social media marketing?
- What social media networks is my business actively working on?
- Is my target audience on that network, or am I simply working it because it’s a popular network? (e.g. – If your audience is senior citizens, TikTok is not where you should be, no matter how popular it is. Facebook is where the action would be for your audience, and vice versa.)
- How often am I check the analytics? What is it telling me?
- When I search my business name, what are people saying about it?
- How actively am I participating in the conversations surrounding my business?
I hope this helps shed some light into the myth of social media marketing being a magic pill. I also hope that it doesn’t dissuade you from using social media marketing to your benefit.
Lastly, if you need added clarification on anything, or help with your own social media efforts, reach out to me via email at mgudka@s4inc.com.
Till next time then … I hope you have a fabulous day.