Social Media Marketing Strategy

People always talk about a social media marketing strategy, but no one every does anything about it.

Okay, I don’t know what that means exactly, but it sure was a catchy way of weaving “social media marketing strategy” into the intro, wasn’t it?

But enough self-consciousness. A lot of people really are using this “social media” stuff. (Which by now really needs a new name.) Social media covers a lot of territory and a lot of products. Since there are so many people congregating this way, they form a new target audience to market to. So if you sell stuff, you may want to find a way to get your message in front of these people. Seriously - 6 in 10 wealthy online consumers use social media tools. (Read the article here.)

The issue for advertisers should not be, “which of these toys should I use to promote with?” There are just too many, and too many variations of each. And within each variation, too many cliques of people, too many circles of friends. You can spend perhaps 10 minutes a day skulking around the Facebook group for used RV, (I love having a PR 4 blog at my disposal!) trying to find users who are interested in coming to your website. This will take a lot of time.

If you try to do this for every possible social media fad, you will waste a lot of time for minimal gain. A social media marketing strategy has to inform you of which sites will benefit you, so you don’t hit them all in a slipshod manner. Do you want to be on YouTube? If you aren’t willing to loosen up on your brand image, you should stay away – there are enough lame corporate videos on YouTube to choke a horse, and no one will ever care about them. Do you want a blog? You’d better be ready to post to it, or find an employee who is exceptionally gifted at writing brilliant and insightful opinions, (hi mom!) or hire someone to do it for you. And which of these will reach your target audience more easily? Does your message actually require an entire blog? Or is it complex enough you can’t possibly cover everything with just a handful of edgy YouTube posts?

If you really want to exploit the burgeoning world of web 2.0 for your business, you need to form a well-thought out social media marketing strategy. The alternative will be toying with each of these tactics and hoping for the best.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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