What is Social Media?
Social Media is an internet marketing revolution for businesses that are able to take full advantage. In today's busy age, the idea is to get in front of your potential customers on a regular basis, getting in quickly and getting straight to the point. You also need to have something attractive to them, be it valuable information or promotions to keep customers wanting more. Getting customers to interact with your business is the first step in leading to a potential sale or lead. The key is to have an INTERACTIVE website and social media presence. To have something interactive, the website owner needs to be ACTIVE and create value.
Social media sites are able to help businesses create "Viral" promotions. When a promotion is such that it interests a large number on a quick timeline and spreads like a virus throughout the internet, it is considered viral. Social media is the key to this as users are visiting social media sites multiple times daily for information, making it easier to create web buzz.
Social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Linked In, various website forums & blogs all contribute to today's social web.
Social media has been a great help to website owners around the world as it has been able to wake up some very sleepy websites. When business owners decide to step into social media, they typically start out by creating new promotions tailored to social media which involves creating captivating, interactive presentations as well as promotions that ask users to be interactive and feel they are a part of something. The idea is to keep them coming back. By creating content specifically for the social web, website owners have added this quality content to their websites as well which in turn drives traffic, leads & sales through page stickiness (keeping people on your site).
Social media is a great way to build your brand on a large scale with a small budget. Facebook Fan Pages are a great example of this. If I am on Facebook and search for SEO, the search results will have results for Groups, People & Pages all for the term SEO. So I decided to look at "Pages" results and see a company that offers great marketing tips on a regular basis. As soon as I click the "Like" button (formerly the "Become a Fan" button), that shows up in my newsfeed to all of my Facebook friends that I "Like xyz-marketing company". My friends see this and decide to check it out and also may "Like" the page, sending that into their newsfeeds and further working the trickle-down effect. If you can create something unique, it can spread like wildfire through social media. The key is to present your promotion well and in a unique way to give it the best chance.
We are also noticing a trend in website users looking for the social media icons on a website as a way of seeing that the company is current and a part of the social web. It is a sign of the times and important to not miss out. Search engines are placing more value on what you do socially as well and going as far as adding status updates to the search results index.
For more information on building up your business on the social web, please use our contact form or email us. Our creative team will work to get you the social media jumpstart your business needs.
