Social media

Social Media Marketing seems to be the latest buzz word for anyone looking to increase their online presence and sales, but is Social Media Marketing (SMM) all it is cracked up to be?

S.M.M companies are now springing up all over the place these days and they are telling anyone that will listen about how incredibly important social media like Facebook twitter and YouTube are to your business but, for the average small to medium sized business, does marketing to social networks really live up to all the hype? Is spending a small fortune on hiring a SMM company really worth it? And has anyone really done their research on this before they hired someone to set up there Facebook business page? Some SMM companies are setting up things like Facebook business pages (which are free) for $600 to $1,000 or more and telling their clients that they don’t need a website because Facebook is the biggest social network in the world and everybody has a Facebook account. Now while it may be true that Facebook is the largest social network in the world and yes, Facebook’s members are potential consumers, the real question is are they actually buying? Social media marketing companies are all too happy to point out the positives of social media like how many people use Facebook or how many tweets were sent out last year and how many people watch YouTube videos etc. but are you getting the full picture? I once sat next to a SMM “expert” at a business seminar who was spruiking to anyone who came within earshot about the amazing benefits of setting up a Facebook business page for small business (with him of course) and selling on Facebook. So, intrigued by the aforementioned “experts” advice I looked him up on Facebook only to find he had only 11 Facebook friends (not a good start). So being the research nut that I am, I decided to take a good look into SMM in regard to selling to see if it actually worked, who did it work for and if it did why did Social Media Marketing work for them? And should business rely so heavily on social networks for sales?

As a web developer I was constantly (and now increasingly) confronted with several social networking challenges when potential clients would say that having a website sounds good but they had a Facebook business page and had been told by various sources (the ever present yet anonymous “they”) that social networks were the thing to do, but after discussing their needs it became quite clear that those potential clients didn’t actually know why they needed social networks or SMM to generate online sales, They just wanted it. For small and medium sized business I always recommended building a quality website over any type of social network, why? Well it’s simple really because social media is Social Media, and social Networks are Social Networks they are not business media and business networks (that would be more like LinkedIn). I know that sounds simple but it’s true and the statistics back it up. The fact is that social media marketing fails to tell you that Facebook is a social network not a search engine and despite the number of Facebook users and Google users being around the same, people don’t use Facebook in the same way that they use a search engine like Google (which has around half the search engine market), Yahoo and Bing to search for business or products. They use it to keep in touch with family and friends or for news and entertainment. In a recent study done by the IBM Institute for Business Value around 55% of all social media users stated that they do not engage with brands over social media at all and only around 23% actually purposefully use social media to interact with brands. Now out of all the people who do use social media and who do interact with brands whether purposefully or not, the majority (66%) say they need to feel a company is communicating honestly before they will interact.

A great social media manager is, as Ron Burgundy would say: “The balls”.

It’s an undisputed fact that every business needs to be active in social media. The ever-changing demands of the modern day consumer requires brands to think fast and adapt quickly in order to stay one step ahead.

The role of a social media manager has appealed to the mass generation of socially-active internet users. It’s hard not to. Especially when some might think that you can earn big bucks from posting Facebook updates. Hardly.

Being a social media manager is kind of like being a stand-up comedian. You have to quickly understand your audience and your engagement with them is vital. In order to accomplish this, you need to know if the audience is laughing at your jokes and you need to know this in real-time. If you can do this, then you have already won the crowd.

So, how do you become a social manager? More to the point, how do you become a great social manager?

The answer will be surprising to some. Firstly, you have to want it. Second, you have to love it. Third, you have to learn it. And even if you tick all these boxes, you should ask yourself: “Am I a social person?” If the answer is no, then becoming a social media manager is probably not for you…

So let’s take a look at the stats.

LinkedIn shows 57,910 results for “social media manager”
Social media has now overtaken porn as the number 1 activity on the web
97% of all consumers search for local businesses online
71% of consumers receiving a quick brand response on social media say they would likely recommend that brand to others
93% of marketers use social media for business
In terms of difficulty of execution, nearly half (49%) of B2B marketers put social media marketing at the top, followed by content marketing (39%), SEO (26%) and mobile (25%)
77% of B2B marketers use a blog as part of their content marketing mix
On average, 25% of marketing budgets are now spent on content development, delivery and promotion
78% of small businesses attract new customers through social sites
When asked to rank their company’s social business maturity on a scale of 1 to 10, more than half of global business executives gave their company a score of 3 or below
But the statistic that is most relevant to this article is:

Just 12% of those using social marketing feel they actually use it effectively.
Being a social media manager brings with it some key benefits within a freelance setting. The most recognisable being the fact that you are your own boss. You make the decisions and answer to no one. You send the invoices and you set the policies. Heck, you could sit in your underpants all day on the computer if you wanted to.

The other is money. It is an in-demand role, but one that companies are still struggling to come to terms with. Some companies realise and understand the value social media could bring to their enterprise and are willing to invest heavily in robust social media campaigns. Being your own boss, you can decide how to set your costs and price accordingly.

Another attractive reason is the low barriers to entry. With low start-up costs and plenty of online resources (like this one!) to rapidly decrease the learning cure, anyone can launch a freelance social management business within a short space of time.

The importance of utilizing social media to help any business grow cannot be understated. But, there can be serious legal consequences for businesses when their employees or affiliates and marketers use any of the popular social media forums. This can hold true both when employees are acting on behalf of your business and when they use social media for their personal use. Smart business owners identify the problems ahead of time and then devise a strategy to prevent unnecessary liability and address risks when they become known. Of course, that strategy should start with an appropriate social media policy. But, many businesses draft social media policies which do not address all the potential concerns it should, or even draft policies in a manner which renders them illegal!

So, how can you ensure your business’s social media policy isn’t a dud? First, you must understand what could go wrong in social media.

What Could Go Wrong For My Business In Social Media?

Here is a broad list of legal concerns your business may face relating to social media:

-Employees who reveal confidential or proprietary information in a blog entry that can be viewed by millions of readers;
-Employees who post discriminatory or negative comments on social media regarding your business or other employees;
-Employees who post objectionable content on their Facebook pages that raises into question their character, which in turn reflects on your business; or
-Employees, affiliates and other sponsored endorsers can even subject their employers to liability by promoting the company’s services or products without disclosing the employment relationship. This is otherwise known as a sponsored endorsement in legal parlance. The FTC has made it clear that any “material connections” between the endorser and the sponsor must be disclosed in connection with a product or service endorsement, which is defined as any type of positive review. Sponsored endorsers can also potentially create liability for your business through any deceptive claims made about any products or services offered by your business.
Why A Social Media Policy Can Protect Your Business

If you have employees or use any type of third-party marketers or affiliates, you should adopt a written social media policy. Though not an absolute shield from liability, businesses must adopt social media use policies protecting the employer consistent with the company’s organizational culture. Not only can these policies serve as a strong deterrent to employees, they can be uses as the basis of terminating employees and affiliates or other third-parties.

But, What Should Your Company Social Media Policy Really Say (Or Not Say)?

Of course, your company’s social media policy should make clear to employees what the employer expects with regard to social media use, both on and off the job. These expectations may vary between companies, but employers should generally be concerned with rules against conduct that may result in unlawful sexual harassment or other liability, rules prohibiting disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, and company policies governing the use of corporate logos and other branding concerns when engaged in social media use. I’ll go into more specific details about what your policy should say below.

INTRODUCTION:

Social Media has become a global phenomenon which has made millions and millions of people worldwide to be engrossed in its use, but for a social media page to be a booming success especially in the world of entrepreneurship; one has to exhaust all the efforts to attract loyal followers. Here are some of the most valuable recommendations on how to make this possible:

Market Yourself
Obviously, the very first thing to do is to encourage and persuade people to follow you and what best way to do this is simply to “ask them to follow you”. This could be effectively done by making your page available in social media pages so social media aficionados will no longer take too much time to look for your profile. This can be done in ways such as:

· Provide the links in your profile that will lead directly to your website’s homepage.

· Express your sincere intent to connect with your subscribers in social media by sending them relevant emails.

· Integrate your social media profile links with your email signature.

· When you distribute business card, make sure that you incorporate the social media profile usernames

Appropriate Setting up of Profiles
It is important to mull over about a lot of things when you are initially setting up your profiles for the purpose of increasing the number of social media followers; here are some important details to consider:

· THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES TO BE USED. People are currently on the craze of joining the bandwagon and try to be in almost all social networking sites because they want to generate a huge number of online followers. This is not actually advised because monitoring and maintaining the number of followers would be quite daunting. CHOOSE FEW BUT POWERFUL SOCIAL MEDIA SITES that is more suitable for your business. Some of the most dominant sites are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram; whichever ever way you want to promote your brand, there are appropriate social media sites to be of use.

· ESTABLISH YOUR PROFILE NAME. When you use different profile names for each of the social media sites you are into, it would be difficult to gather followers because they would be confused. Even if people would like to follow your profile in other social media platforms, they will eventually give up if your profile is very difficult to find.

· USE ONE UNIQUE AVATAR. The avatar you use in your profile is what defines your page and sets you apart from the others. They will be part of your identity and it is strongly advised that you use the one avatar for each of your profile on the different social media platforms. Since the avatar is your identity, DO NOT LEAVE THE AVATAR EMPTY.

· PROVIDE A DETAILED BUT CONCISE DESCRIPTION. Provide people with what you want to convey about your business. Express in detail what your business can do for them and why they should follow your page, this way they will be compelled to click your website link and learn more about your brand and what benefits you will be able to offer them.

Social Media Page Automation
Fact is, social media is not at all totally automated, and you really have to log in every time you want to make new posts or upload files and photos. But, there are fail-safe ways to automate your social media page; one can make use of services like the HOOTSUITE and BUFFER to have a scheduled posting of images, text posts and links based on your preferred date and time. WordPress plugins may also be installed so that it could automatically send blog post links.

Automation greatly helps in establishing a powerful social media presence because through automated posts makes your brand reach more people even when you are not logged in 24/7. But make sure that you also have time to log in and share some of the posts and content from other people in the social media sites who also share your posts. Take time for some online conversations as well.