Social media marketing utilizes social media sites to attract readers attention in order to gain website traffic and increase brand awareness. Your hope with social media is to allow your followers to refer others to you and to do the footwork of your marketing. Many people trust their peers when it comes to referrals, so garnishing the power of social media marketing will work wonders for your business.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing
Pros
- Inexpensive for a DIY’er
- You are an established source more trustworthy than PPC or SEO placement
- Free advertising
- Longer lasting benefits as opposed to PPC’s
- More precise demographic exposure
- Can go viral for positive exposure
- It’s fun marketing
- Established accounts with many followers generate fast exposure
- Can help with SEO
Cons
- Complaints and scrutiny are public, immediately
- Takes a lot of time to see a ROI
- Takes a lot of commitment to manage and maintain
- Is more of a relationship tool not a sales tool
- Can go viral for the negative exposure
- Can be too fun without enough ROI
- You are at risk of losing all the content you’ve created on a third party platform. The tools come and go: Myspace…to…Facebook…to…Twitter…to…Instagram…to…?
- It takes talent and experience in order to be successful
Social media marketing might be best for your business if any of these apply…
- You have lots of time
- You don’t need additional sales right now
- Your company sales & business model is focused on relationship building
- You need good PR
- Your target market is heavily involved in social media
- You need to diversify your online marketing efforts