Irrational Exuberance in Social Media Marketing
Did you know that Facebook and Google are nearly tied for overall monthly visitors? It’s a fact that frequently gets thrown around at business networking seminars when the topic of social media marketing comes up because it’s so exciting. The small business owner hears that social media marketing is HOT and thinks ‘Maybe I can’t get on that first page of Google results by myself, but I can make a Facebook page!’
On the surface, it’s true – anyone can make a Facebook page, and it’s not that hard to attract an admirable number of ‘likes’ with a basic social media marketing strategy. The same goes for Twitter right now, and for the next generation of social media platforms, all of which will be user-friendly. With a little research, anyone in-house can whip up a Facebook page or get a Twitter feed going. Maybe you’ve even been experimenting with a blog as a social media marketing tool.
Don’t let the huge visitor counts or overall popularity of Facebook and Twitter fool you into a sense of complacency, however.
Social media marketing is definitely here to stay, and clearly has to be a part of any connected company’s core marketing stratagem. But when a marketer implements a social media strategy in a vacuum – i.e., assumes they can drive all their traffic through an active Twitter feed – their efforts are doomed to failure.
Social media only really shines from a marketing standpoint when it’s used in conjunction with other efforts like email marketing, paid search marketing (such as Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaigns), organic search marketing through content building, and value-adding extras like blogs, vlogs, and podcasts.
When you think about how your business can make the most of social media, think in terms of interconnectivity and integration… not getting the most followers or 1,000 ‘likes’ or 50 blog comments. After all, that Facebook page you made isn’t going to send very many customers your way if it’s not a vehicle to promote your podcast, to draw attention to some call to action, or to gather demographic data through polls. And if you’re not focusing at least some of your resources on website optimization, how exactly, are people going to find your Facebook page in the first place?
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