Social Media Marketing: Connect with your customers
So, what do you mean by Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is to market using websites that use content user generated content and build communities online. These social media marketing websites like Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, etc. help create positive publicity and also help manage web based personalities.
The clincher here for most businesses is that on these websites they can talk to the consumers rather than pitching at them.
Where?
There are consumers present online on various communities and you can have these communities working for you by having them debate and talk more and more about your business and your product. You can use blogs that advertise your products, communities that discuss it and users that recommend it to others.
The internet is filled with such communities. Facebook, Orkut, Beebo, Twitter, Digg and Delicious to Econsultancy, NetMums etc are all best suited communities that will help sell better whatever it is that you want to.
How?
There are many different communities present online and the important thing for you will be to determine which ones are those that are best suited for your purpose. If, for example you are marketing cleaning technology for hospitals, you should not to use Beebo for that.
It is also for you to decide whether you will go to your customers and join their communities or if you will create your own content and spaces and try and attract them to those.
Don’t
Remember that people get online on social communities to talk, discuss and exchange ideas. Not to buy things and so you are not there to pitch. What you need to do instead is that you should try and provide them information about your brand or your product and make a customer feel it worth visiting the site again. All you need to do is to create an experience for the user which will make him visit your site again and again.
But if you try and pitch, you will end up ruining the online reputation of your company.
Finally, Social Media Marketing is a constantly developing, mutating, evolving form of marketing. There is no fool proof way to successfully market products via social media. On the other hand carefully tailored campaigns might help your business reach heights never thought of before too.
But it is important to remember that this is a long term strategy and needs to be thought of as one. It takes time to build a good reputation that will help drive sales, over a longer period of time.
Tags: Beebo, Delicious to Econsultancy, Digg, Facebook, Myspace, NetMums, Orkut, Twitter
