If you’ve been paying attention at all as a small business owner, then you know how important it is to make social networking sites an integral part of your online marketing strategy. The one question you may still have is how to measure the success of your online marketing campaign. Given the current economic situation, you’re probably concerned with making every marketing dollar count, so how can you make sure you social networking efforts are worth the effort? Here are five easy keys to guide you.
1. Listen to Your Audience. Given the number of social networking sites on the internet, it’s completely unreasonable to utilize all of them. Start by finding out which social networking sites are most highly populated by your target audience, and then listen to what your potential customers are saying.
2. Involve Yourself. Once you’ve found your target audience on a few key social networking sites, start engaging your target audience. The first step is to listen to what they are saying about your company. If you find that what you hear isn’t positive, find a way to help the customers that aren’t happy with the products or services that you provide. Do what you can to make things right. If you find that your target audience only has positive things to say, continue to engage them, listening to what they have to say. You’ll find that their positive attitudes about your business will only grow.
3. Give Back. Social networking sites are great places to post information that will lead to positive customer attitudes about your product or service. Start a business blog, tweet on Twitter, put photos on your Flickr site, and create Podcasts. These types of activities will drive potential customers to your site, and if your site is optimized to make leads out of visitors, your sales will increase!
4. Use Your Tools Wisely. Making your social networking strategy mesh with your business strategy is critical, but that can’t happen until you’ve become familiar with how each social networking site works and how it can best benefit your business. How does each site connect you with clients and potential customers? Which sites specialize in the kind of customer contact that is most beneficial to your business? How can you use a variety of different social networking sites together to find potential customers and engage them? Answer these questions and watch your social media marketing strategy work for you.
5. Measure, measure, measure. You’re running a business, and the bottom line is determining the return on your investment in social media marketing. But the good news is that social media marketing has a significant impact on the inbound marketing techniques that you’re already using. For example, social networking can increase your search engine ranking, your inbound links, and the number of customers who subscribe to your RSS feed. You will notice that it increases the comments left on your blog, the number of times that your brand is mentioned in cyberspace, and first time visitors. In other words, social networking enhances the strategies you’re already using. You can use a good analytics package plus tracking codes and closed loop marketing to find out the number of visits and sales that occur as a result of your social media marketing strategy.
What you’ll find in the long run is that social media marketing can have a huge impact on the success of your business if you use it the right way. And the right way includes finding your target audience on a small number of appropriate social networking sites, listening to what they have to say, humbly and graciously joining the conversation they’re having about your industry in general and your company in particular, and righting any mistakes that you’ve made in the past. Find the right places to frequent and the right conversations to join and your efforts will pay off in the end!
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