When I was seventeen years old, a friend and I would walk around neighborhoods for hours at a time placing fliers on people's doors for some pizzeria place. We would go very early on weekend mornings and usually were done placing all the fliers by noon, at which time we would meet up with other friends at an internet cafe and spend all our hard earned money buying microwave-ready soups (just add water) and playing on the computers there. I now think back to that very short chapter of my life from the business' point of view and realize that all the time and money spent on creating the fliers, making copies of it, stapling a rubber band to EACH flier, and then paying Helio and me to go place them at strangers' houses, could have been better distributed in connecting with their target audiences by using Social Media Marketing.
Social Media is more than just Facebook, Youtube, and Google, check this extensive list of websites which companies may use to reach their customers. Therefore, Social Media Marketing is more than just creating an account on Facebook and sending friend requests to strangers, or having a channel of your brand on Youtube.
Social Media is about socializing, and when looked from a business stand point, it is a powerful tool to expose your brand and content in places where people get together and share with each other. Using this tool to its fullest potential requires skill, and maybe a little help from companies like Overdrive Interactive. The trick is being able to place your efforts past getting people to press that "Like" button or gaining subscribers on Youtube. Doing this requires managing and planning strategies to connect with the consumers and a constant development of your social channels and contents, with the ultimate goal being creating an emotional connection with your audience by making them feel valued and rewarded for their support of your brand.
Mastering the art of Social Media Marketing may take some time and creativity, but in the case of the pizzeria i used to work for on the weekends, it will certainly be more productive than paying a couple of teenagers minimum wage to place fliers at random houses. Ten-Fold.
Stay Creative.,
-MGM
Sources:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasabibratwurst/3128711125/sizes/l/
http://www.ovrdrv.com/index.asp
Social Marketing is about creating relationships. In any relationship, personal or business, you will only get out of it what you put in.
ReplyDeleteNothing of value comes easy.
It is amazing how much social media has changed the way companies advertise. Sometimes the advertisements in Facebook seem more like spam. But every once in a while you will see that one ad that makes you want to learn more. So how does this happen? How does that little paragraph gets you to click it? This is when great thought pays off.
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