There are a lot of areas you need to pay attention to when starting with social media. But there are 3 requirements in order to make social media successful that need to be in place even before you start with building your social networks.
The first and most important requirement is to have a good website. The website should have the necessary information for people to make an informed decision. It should look professional. For me professional is that there aren’t any spelling mistakes, the colors match and there are professional pictures only. It is great if your website can lead the visitor to the page you want the visitor to end up in. Most of the time, this would be your free offer where the visitor can sign-up and you just captured another possible lead. If you don’t know how to accomplish that, just put a sign-up box in a visible spot on most pages. The ultimate goal of all social media marketing is to lead the people back to your website, where they can sign-up for your free offer. For this reason, your website needs to be professional and in good shape.
The second requirement is to have a free offer on your website. If the offer is something that your target audience wants to read/listen/watch, you will be able to capture their email address and with that the permission to contact them. This is an important step down the social media sales funnel.
The last requirement is to have a blog. Perfect is when your blog is integrated with your website for SEO purposes. But even if your blog is not integrated, it is a vital part of your social media marketing. A blog allows you to show your expertise, spread information and to put your name out into the web. In most of the social networks, you can integrate your blog, which will make your blog even more visible.
Make sure you have all 3 requirements in place even before you start with social media marketing in order to be successful.
Today, I wanted to find out what is my definition of Social Media Marketing. There are tons of definitions out there on the web, but somehow each and every one is different. Even if the difference is very small, it is still different. So, what exactly do I understand under Social Media Marketing? Let’s start first with a look at what Social Media is.
Wikipedia defines Social Media as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues.” I agree with this definition. For me that is what social media is: web-based technologies for social interaction. That is also, what makes it so difficult to define Social Media Marketing.
Marketing by itself is the process of promoting a business or product to get the client to buy. In Social Media Marketing that is ultimately the goal as well, but if you go with a mindset of selling into social media, you will not succeed. Instead, you want to find your target audience and engage them with interesting content. You want to find supporters and fans for your business. You want to interact with them. You want to find out more about them. For me, Social Media Marketing is like a huge cocktail party going on without limitations by space or time. So, just enjoy yourself, keep your objective in mind and relax.
