Social Media Marketing Defined: Social Media Marketing (SMM) refers to the art of building  trust and exposure for your brand utilizing social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube.  What makes Social Media a unique and attractive medium is its ability to encourage real-time customer interaction, feedback, collaboration, and idea generation.

 

Before the introduction of social media marketing, most marketing and advertising campaigns focused on the traditional “push model”.  This approach drives new customers through repeated exposure to a product and/or branding.  With social media, a consumer’s affinity for a product or service can be harnessed through real-time online interaction with the company or other customer.  This interactivity can be extremely valuable for real-world intelligence gathering and for quick adjustments to marketing and promotional efforts.

 

 

With social media Web sites and blogs, company’s can leverage consumer trust in their product and continue to build their product line based on the real time feedback of consumers. As an extension of the social media benefits listed above, the following also holds true; when consumers feel like they have a particular connection or trust with your product, it becomes much easier to retain them. Costumer retention in today’s market is extremely important when one ways the major increase in competition as a result of the online shopping Web sites such as amazon.com and ebay.com.

Example: You own a sports apparel company in Los Angeles and are interested in targeting Los Angeles Internet shoppers that are looking to buy basketball equipment. Research has shown you that your target demographic is talking about a new pair of basketball sneakers that just came out. You identify the most authoritative social media Web sites/ blogs discussing these sneakers by identifying the social media Web sites/ blogs with the most traffic, responses and frequency surrounding the new basketball sneakers. You connect your company to these outlets by beginning to provide useful content and thoughts about these sneakers, like what makes them a great pair of sneakers, how they compare to other sneakers on the market, where you can get them for the best price etc. As your target demographic begins to identify your apparel company with useful information on issues important to them, consumers begin to visit your Web site for other information or products and continue to come back to you for other relevant information.

Process:

1.Define your goals: Is the purpose of your campaign to drive traffic to your Web site or is it to build brand awareness?

2.Define your key messages: What is it that you want people saying and associating your product/ brand with? Create 3 possible messages you would like people to associate with your brand. Expand on those examples. Give three phrases, elevator speeches and or slogans for each message.

3.Define your ROI: Once your goals are established, we can determine how to measure the success of your campaign ROI can be measured by traffic to any specific URL that you choose or can be measured of in terms of the magnitude and reach of online discussions and interaction surrounding your brand.

4.Develop a Social Media Game Plan: Before kicking a successful social media campaign into high gear, it is necessary to assess where the conversations and traffic are coming from and what is creating a buzz and interest in the interactive community/ who the buzz is centered around. Once we can address where to focus our efforts, then we aim and focus are efforts more efficiently, in a time and budget considerate fashion.

Please continue to browse our site for more information on how we can provide you with efficient brand building services.  You can also give us a call at (310) 906 0216 to discuss any Internet marketing questions that you may have.  For addition information on our services and how to take advantage of online media, see our sections on Internet Marketing, Web Development, Web Optimization, or view our archive of blog posts, which contains helpful information for eMarketers.