Social media marketing seems like the latest buzzword for anyone looking to increase their online presence and sales, but is social media marketing (SMM) all it seems?
SMM companies are popping up everywhere these days and telling anyone who hears how incredibly important social media like Facebook, Twitter and best smm panel YouTube are to their business, but, for the small and medium sized business, marketing is targeting social media. . Are the networks really living up to all the hype? Is it really worth spending a small fortune to hire an SMM company? And did anyone really do their research before hiring someone to create their Facebook business page? Some SMM companies are creating things like Facebook business pages (which are free) for $ 600 to $ 1,000 or more and tell their customers they don’t need a website because Facebook is the largest social network in the world and all of the world has a Facebook account. Now, while it may be true that Facebook is the largest social network in the world and yes, Facebook members are potential consumers, the real question is whether they are actually shopping.
Social media marketing companies are very happy to point out the positives of social media such as how many people use Facebook or how many tweets were sent last year and how many people watch YouTube videos, etc., but you are getting the full picture. ? I once sat next to an SMM “expert” at a business seminar who was talking to anyone within earshot about the amazing benefits of setting up a Facebook business page for small businesses (with him, of course) and selling on Facebook. So intrigued by the advice of the aforementioned “experts”, I searched him on Facebook and found that he only had 11 friends on Facebook (not a good start). So, being a research geek, I decided to take a look at SMM regarding selling to see if it really worked, who did it work for and if it worked, why did Social Media Marketing work for them? And should businesses rely so heavily on social media for sales?
As a web developer, I was constantly (and now increasingly) faced with various social media challenges when potential customers were saying that having a website sounds good but they had a business page on Facebook and it had been said so by multiple sources (l ‘ubiquitous but anonymous “they”) that social media was the right thing to do, but after discussing their needs, it became quite clear that those prospects didn’t really know why they needed social media or SMM to drive sales. online, they just wanted it. For small and medium-sized businesses I have always advised to create a quality website on any type of social network, why? Well it’s really simple because social media is social media and social media is social media, not business media and business media (it would be more like LinkedIn). I know it sounds simple but it’s true and the statistics confirm it. The fact is, social media marketing doesn’t tell you that Facebook is a social network, not a search engine, and even though the number of Facebook and Google users is more or less the same, people don’t use Facebook in the same way. in which to use a search engine. like Google (which has about half of the search engine market), Yahoo and Bing to search for companies or products. They use it to keep in touch with family and friends or for news and entertainment. In a recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value, about 55% of all social media users said they do not interact with brands through social media, and only about 23% use social media on purpose to interact with brand names. Now, of all the people who use social media and interact with brands, whether on purpose or not, the majority (66%) say they need to feel that a company communicates honestly before interacting. So how is social media marketing used? And is it worth doing?
Well, first of all I would say that having a well optimized website will still get you a lot more business than social media in most cases especially if you are a local small or medium business because a lot more people will type “Port Macquarie hairdresser” on a search. engine like Google, Yahoo and Bing than any social media site and if you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on all that potential business. However, despite all the (not so good) statistics, I still think it’s still a good idea for companies to use social networks, but not in the same way that many SMM professionals do today, because what? Because it clearly doesn’t work as they say. Basically SMM businesses and businesses as a whole saw social media like Facebook as a new market ready for selection and when Facebook started measuring users in the millions, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invested $ 500,000 to this. (in June 2004) and some risk capital from them f