What has always been the most effective way to generate home based business? Referrals from existing customers with their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive & most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional method of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. No-one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers will make a purchasing decision in line with the input of family and friends.
Social media marketing provides the electronic platform for referral marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets go out every week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media than any other time in the history of business. Can your company afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?
If you are like me, you study from making mistakes. However, if you can study from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are a few common mistakes new marketers make when attempting to create and implement a social media plan:
I’ll figure it out as I go- the largest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without any plan. Take time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites were created for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all of the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very frustrating and will lead to many companies abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of establishing these site, understand the various options, and spend time engaging rather than fixing problems. There are good online educational programs out there that can teach business owners on how to create and implement a social media plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to venture out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this strategy is that should you grow too fast, you will not be able to keep up with all the great things about each site. The best approach would be to create one site, like Facebook, learn the facts and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and engage with others. If you set up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your lack of participation could defeat your overall goal. It’s better to have 1 or 2 2 completely utilized social networking sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with individuals who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will find you before they find your website. If they find your website and you have a pic of your logo, no pic, or hardly any personal information, then they will likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most of all, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the largest stumbling block for some beginning marketers. After Lifestyle Enhancement have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This type of media is a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices certainly are a dying breed and attempting to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield exactly the same failed results. Instead of selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself being an expert in the field in which you are practicing. For instance, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself and your site, educate homeowners on which they can do to sell a house themselves. The truth is, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By providing valuable information, you’ll become an expert about them. Then, when the reader is ready to sell his / her house, they will probably ask for your services.
Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, plus some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up how you post. If you simply put out a blog every day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change it out up a little. If you have a blog one day, then put up a simple video the next. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you’ll achieve.
Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media marketing activity. This doesn’t imply that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s easier to have 1 post per day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Do it all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I would use to communicate with people. Needing to log into multiple accounts each day to check on the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The truth is, it became to frustrating to get this done and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load most of my email accounts into Outlook, I could efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. Exactly the same applies to social media. If you have to log into and log from 5 different social media marketing sites each day, it’ll become tiresome and your degree of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that may allow you to log into your entire social media makes up about interactions may be the easiest way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media marketing dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner seeking to create a social media plan for your business, then you absolutely should educate yourself on how to use the technology and find tools to work with you in the daily utilization. Unless you know how to create a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t likely to get built. By taking the steps listed above in this article, it is possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media marketing plan.
