Did you know that if Facebook were a country it would be the forth biggest in the world? Only Facebook alone has more than 300 million users, and the fastest growing segment is 55-60 years old! But this is just Facebook. Social media is so much more. It has overtaken the porn as the number 1 activity on the web. That’s literally MIND-BLOWING. Don’t you think?
When I graduated in June I didn’t realize how important my degree would become. As a Music and Media Management student the course put a lot of emphasize on the online revolution in social media, or the social media revolution.
It was easy to understand how it worked because I was already a part of the generation social media was first introduced to and used by. I was already using social media everyday, communicating with friends and colleagues and my first part-time job after completing university was as a social media manager for an investment company.
When I finally launched my company officially in February 2011, ¨The Infidelity Inspectors¨ http://theinfidelityinspectors.vpweb.no/default.html it was no question in mind whether to use social media platforms to market my company or not. I know a lot of companies even today are sceptical towards using social media for the sake of branding or attracting costumers; don’t be. A great number of companies today are using it, so if you are not using it competitors will bypass you in no time. A great brand and company that is very aware of this is Coca Cola. They know that if they don’t let their engines run they have hungry competitors breathing them in the neck ready to take over. That’s why they are the number one brand in the world; because they never underestimate competition even thought they are the best. It’s the same thing if you ignore social media.
Using social media today is not only a great tool to bring in statistics or to study the market, but it’s a great way to show that you care about your market. You are giving the market a chance to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction about the product or service, and that is often very much appreciated by the costumer. It’s all about great service, really, and honestly a great company is always a company that always offers great service. Don’t piss the costumer off. They are right, even if they are not.
Be sure to control your platforms so that unfair and unreasonable discussions on the forums will not harm your good name and reputation.
In my job as a social media manager I use www.hootsuite.com to correlate all the platforms (Blogs, Twitter, FB and more), which saves me a lot of time and gives the audience an impression of consistency. Consistency signalises stability, which signalises trust. Trust is key to a young entrepreneur because a young entrepreneur doesn’t have success-stories behind her/him, and are counting on the clients trust to be able to move forward in the long-term.
There are a couple of crucial factors for successful social media marketing. Two things are already mentioned; consistency and control and the third crucial factor is high activity. High activity is extremely important because of the short lifetime of published news that is the social medias nature. You need to strike while the iron is hot!
Good luck with your social media marketing!
