Social media impacts all other marketing forms because of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, SEO, and social media to make it easy for people to find you online. In America, 75% of people use social media and spend 15 minutes of every hour online on social media sites. The main ideas behind optimizing your social media engagement are as follows:
+ Be responsive
+ Be gracious
+ Answer questions
+ Respond to complaints
Walking the fine line between being social and selling can be a struggle. Produce content that is relevant to the needs of your target audience. You should still use coupons and deals such as Facebook Deals/Foursquare Deals, but if you over promote or are too self focused people will lose interest. If you're stumped for content, you can use polls and surveys to see what your target audience desires. Each social media site is unique, and so your content must vary in tone and personality depending on the approach for each social media site. Focus on the content and the lifestyle surrounding your business not just the features. People will share your content because they desire to contribute to the conversation, self-interest, altruism, validation, or affinity with the larger community.
Benefits of Social Media
Optimizing on social media does require extensive time and labor. Only 50% of marketers have less than one year experience in social media marketing. Over half of marketers are spending over 6 hours each week (34% for more than 11 hours a week) on social media. Marketers spending more than 40 hours a week on social media have a great focus on video and blogs. 28% of marketers outsource social media tasks with the largest percentage being for design/development (17%).
#1 Focus for 2011 – Video Marketing/YouTube
56% of business are currently using YouTube, and 77% of marketers plan on increasing their video and/or YouTube marketing. For our current clients:
Contact me with any questions regarding optimizing your community's video! If you're interested in a custom branded video for your community or a corporate video contact our team toll free at 866-778-7719 ext 1!
#2 Focus for 2011 - Facebook
#3 Focus for 2011 – Blogs
Blogs have always been a strong area for social media marketers, and 75% of marketers are planning to increase their blogging activities. Businesses that link their blog to their Twitter account average 79% more followers.
Let us know!
What do you think of social media and inbound marketing?
What social media sites are you using?
What questions/comments do you have about your experience with social media?
The tradition began on June 8, 2010 when Mashable invited the world to "celebrate the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue" on June 30, 2010. See original SMD logo to the right.
This year is resounding with a bounce and a bowl. Mashable is hosting one event in San Francisco at House of Air, an indoor trampoline park, and one event in Williamsburg at Brooklyn Bowl.
