If you’re a business owner and you’re using social outlets such as twitter, facebook and/or youtube as a way to promote your products and services you may be a little frustrated that you can’t see any measured success from the effort you’ve put in so far?
I hate to tell you this… but the concept of a return on investment for social media marketing is really no different than traditional forms of marketing like tv, radio and print. Let’s take twitter for instance. Do you know every single person that is following you? Have you targeted the people you follow to only those who live near you or others in the same industry or business as you? Your tweets may be no different than your radio ad that ran at 3:12 am this morning??? Not a very big audience. And your facebook fan page has how many fans? 18?
You see, you have to first be consistent with your post. Have a good message, hook or whatever you want to call it. You also, at the same time, have to be searching and researching to build your followers. Have your sent your current customers an email or letter to let them know your social sites are there? Have you spent any time to develop a plan to qualify your current customers on what their social media habits and participation level is? There’s just a little more work to it than putting it out there. Much like your traditional marketing. Buying tv time because it’s cheap and the production was free is generally going to leave you with less than expected results. But a well conceived marketing campaign that includes multiple outlets to compliment each other can yield great results.
I feel social media marketing has the opportunity for stronger and quicker results in certain industries. The restaurant, night clubs and fast food industry have an incredible advantage in my opinion. But, once again, they have to develop a following and the have to be consistent with using things such as twitter and facebook. A couple of examples… one restaurant I know uses there facebook fan page to invite everyone to Ladie’s Nite every Tuesday. That’s a personal invitation to over 500 people each week. Another restaurant I frequent has $.99 margaritas on Monday night, but instead of twitter or facebook, they purchased an expensive digital billboard across the street to tell the people that drive by?
If you’re using it, use it consistently… and keep working your “database” for a bigger and more relative audience. If not, you’re going to continue to feel a little frustrated that you haven’t become the next @NAKEDpizza (it’s a twitter thing… look ‘em up). Feel free to call me, email me, tweet me or txt me if you’d like to talk more about your social media marketing… or your traditional marketing for that matter.
