What has always been the most effective way to generate home based business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both the least expensive and most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only one 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a confident return on investment. Nobody under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers can make a purchasing decision using the input of friends and family.
Social media marketing provides the electronic platform for word of mouth marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is linked to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out every week. YouTube has over 100 million views per day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media than any other amount of time in the annals of business. Can your organization afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?
If you’re like me, you study from making mistakes. However, if you can learn from the mistakes of others, then you will achieve success quicker. Why not learn from the mistakes of others? Below are a few common mistakes new marketers make when attempting to create and implement a social media marketing plan:
I’ll figure it out as I go- the largest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without the plan. Take time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites are designed 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 business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the fundamentals of setting up these site, understand the various options, and spend your time engaging instead of fixing problems. There are good online educational programs on the market that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to venture out and develop 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 won’t be able to match all the great things about each site. The very best approach would be to create one site, like Facebook, learn the details and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, take part in events, and build relationships others. If you set up 12 at once, you won’t be as active and your lack of participation could defeat your current goal. It’s better to have one or two 2 completely utilized social media sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Profiles don’t matter- users of social media marketing won’t engage with people who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, lots of people will see you before they find your site. If they find your site and you also have a pic of your logo, no pic, or hardly any personal information, then they will most 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 most beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This kind of media is a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try out this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield 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 example, if you are a Realtor, instead of promoting yourself as well as your site, educate homeowners on what they can do to market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving Personal Development , you’ll become an expert about them. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell his or her house, they will probably ask for your services.
Same approach to communication- not everyone receives information through the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, and some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up the way you post. If you simply put out a blog every day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. For those who have a blog 1 day, then put up a straightforward 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 activity. This doesn’t mean that you must make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post each day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Do it all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to communicate with people. Having to log into multiple accounts every day to check on the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to frustrating to do this and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load all of my email accounts into Outlook, I was able to efficiently check and utilize the benefits of email. Exactly the same applies to social media. If you have to log into and log off of 5 different social media sites each day, it’ll become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that may allow you to log into all your social media makes up about interactions may be the best way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media marketing plan. Again, there are a few good all-in-one social media dashboards that will allow you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner looking to create a social media plan for your business, then you absolutely should learn how to use the technology and find tools to work with you in the daily utilization. Unless you know how to build a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t going to get built. By taking the steps listed above in this post, it is possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media plan.
