Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Social media has become the new marketing hype. Every business today has a Facebook page, Twitter account, MySpace page, Linkedin page, and more. This form of advertising seems to be a must in the office, similar to having an email account and an instant messenger account. This goes well beyond marketing contacts and involves every employee. In most office environments, every employee has their own personal user id and is constantly logged into these media websites. Are they truly promoting your company or simply using it for personal use? When comparing the two, direct mailing lists are more effective than social media in creating sales.

Are your employees promoting business or simply socializing? The majority of employees would presumably be socializing and updating their personal status. Social media seems to be another distraction in the workplace along with cell phones, text messages, instant messages, emails, and website browsing. Businesses need to realize their employees are being paid to work and not to socialize.

Social Media seems to work well for large already branded companies, but for a small to mid-size company it does not seem effective. A local pizza shop, accounting firm, investment firm or privately owned retailer will see very little results using this means of marketing. The objective is to bring customers through your doors and to buy. Direct marketing with mailing lists will guarantee increased sales with a specific call to action and help bring in new customer. Social media can help to increase your rankings in search engines but for local retailers direct mail marketing is going to be the most effective advertising avenue.

"Social Media seems to work well for large already branded companies, "

I could not disagree more. There is a website call inside Facebook that goes through a whole load of businesses that are small, but have thrived on social media.

The problem is that people think it is another marketing too that is there to promote your business. Really social media is another way for you to talk to your customers, so it needs to be given the same amount of attention as a conversation.

People that say things like "social media can helo your increase rankings" don't really understand what social media can do.

Hi Kevrock!

I have the same opinion here. I am agree with you. In my humble opinion, Social media programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their social networks.

What is the problem with BOTH?

Facebook and twitter are the 2 bigs, you want to use them to push traffic to/from each other and your website/contact info.

I suggest writing articles on your website and marketing them through your fb/twitter. It's all about cross traffic.

Person A finds FB, makes his way to your website.

Person B finds twitter, makes her way to your facebook.

Both should provide your contact and a sales pitch so they are getting pitched no matter where they cross into.

Steers, wouldnt that be customer retention and not prospecting for new customers? I agree social media works as a great form of communication.

The main problem with social media is that everyone is talking but very few are listening.  You have 200 followers on Twitter - are you actually reading all their posts?  Are they reading all your posts?

Social media will only work for your business if your current and potential customers are also using the same social media and they are inclined to listen to what you post.

If not, just a waste of your productive time.

Any and all marketing starts with and ends with your customers.  Who they are, where they are, what needs they are looking to get met and where they find information about meeting their needs.

BMT 2010, I agree completely. You figure if you are following 200 companys, say each company send 2-3 tweets a day, who honestly has time to read these 4-600 posts a day. That is a full time job in itself. Just as an example, our company posted a free $50 amex card give away just to simply register on our blog site on facebook, who are mainly friends of ours. Not one person registered. We even had an expiration date.

I have to agree with BMT2010 and Kevrock529.

Using Facebook and Twitter could be helpful for making contacts but at the end of the day its a scattershot to random users.  

Definitely not Targeted marketing tools.

I take that back, if you are a celebrity or major brand, then I see the use of working the Social Media angle.

Direct mail marketing has its own advantages same with the social media. They too have disadvantages. On the part of direct mail marketing, the sender can have a direct offer of the product to the target customer without even using a medium like the social media, but same with social media, direct mail marketing can't offer 100% guarantee that the customer will answer the email. On the other hand social media uses a medium like the net and Google to attract buyer, there is no guarantee that you target a real customer or just a reader or a browser of the web and yet there is also a good probability of popularity and good reviews.

Social Media Marketing is the best way to advertise your website.

These social media networks to generate much traffic and they are very useful in incresing site visibility.