The Fine Print Of Social Media Marketing

One thing is clear and that is that everyone is online and for a business to prosper and grow in future; you will have to have an online presence and strategy; that is if you want to be part of the search results when a potential customer search for services online. Non negotiable.

It’s never been more clearer that old conventional marketing styles no longer has the desired effect. Why? The main reason is that we never envisaged the impact of the online world. Initially when we started connecting online via Facebook, it was solely for recreational reasons.

The reason for this is that back in the day when everyone embarked on Facebook, the platform was mainly an informal social networking platform until 2007 when they introduced marketplace and back in 2012 when they filed to become a public company. The latter happened in such a fashion that we the people barely realised that our identities and behaviour have become commodities in the data trade. You and I are not a Facebook user we are a Facebook product. Facebook sells ads based on what it knows about you and everyone else. That’s its core business. To think otherwise is foolish. But don’t despair. We are receiving plenty of benefit in trade for our data and we’re only going to get more. Right now we have unlimited use of World changing services like Facebook.  Ask yourself, if data is so valuable, why are we not reaping the financial benefits? Facebook is the largest and most-used social media network. Are you taking advantage of everything it offers your business?

Facebook spread across the world, becoming an incredibly valuable company and one of the most important institutions of the early 21st century. Facebook was one of the major forces that brought the internet into the highly-participatory phase. In May 2007, Facebook open their Marketplace, which lets users post classifieds to sell products and services. They acquiring varies companies, made major changes to integrating first Instagram and later Whatsapp. All of these platforms built for people and businesses to connect and showcase their products.

There’s strength in numbers, and with over 1.4 billion users and over 900 million of those users visiting the site every day, Facebook is undoubtedly the 800-pound gorilla of social media. If you’re like most small businesses, you simply can’t afford not to have a presence there.

Here are nine reasons Facebook is the most effective social media marketing tool:

1. Facebook is the most popular social network. 
2. Facebook users encompass all demographics. Whether you’re trying to reach teens or seniors, you can find them on Facebook.
3. Facebook is “sticky.” Facebook users spend 40 minutes per day, on average. Worldwide. More time on Facebook means more time spent interacting with your business’s presence there.
4. Facebook is growing. 
   1. Facebook advertising is affordable. The average Facebook ad costs just R96.83 .99 per thousand impressions.
5. Facebook advertising is highly targeted. You can target your audience by location, age, gender, interests and other factors.
6. Facebook lets you reach out to website customers. 
7. Facebook lets you spread the word to Friends of Friends. 
8. Facebook helps you measure your results.  The free Facebook Insights tool lets you track the results of your Facebook marketing, including ads and organic posts. You can get detailed information about how prospective customers are engaging with your business on Facebook, such as how many likes you got this week and how that compares to past measures, what type of engagement you received on posts, and which ads drove traffic to your website or other actions.

WHAT IS THE SCOPE OF FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM MARKETING FOR A MARKETER

Start by setting up your Facebook & Instagram page and integrating the two platforms. Design a hero banner for both platforms, together with a profile image for each. Write your business bio and complete all sections. Once that is in place update and link your webpage to your social media platforms.

Now you are reading to start using your social media platforms. Keep in mind that both platforms have different audiences and need different marketing principles. Before you officially start to market on the platforms you have to determine where your target audience can be reach. Join the groups. Be careful not to join more than 6 per day, as Facebook will see this as spamming and you might lose the function to join groups. Also read the group rules and ascertain if you will indeed be able to place any ads on the group/page. Now you have to determine the outline of your business products (the main services/products) you would like to give exposure too. Once you are connected to the marketing groups and pages appropriate for your business page, you can start populating your page based on the outline framework. Be careful not to spam your platforms.

Post at least one article/product per week. Gives each of your post the opportunity, scope and time to grow organically, there after you can start to share and distribute the post to various groups and pages you previously joined. It is important to give the page at least 4 to 6 weeks to breath. The success of your marketing hinges on three main factors. The one is your audience (likes) and the other one is your content and lastly to be consistent in your marketing efforts. It goes without saying that if you don’t have likes you obviously don’t have an audience to market too. Initially it is important to create reach through sharing your information, post or product to groups for people that are interested to join your business page. Over time your post will get noticed by people that are interested and your audience will start to increase. This takes time and you will see in your third month that things are starting to change for the better.

Now into the next phase. You populated the page with the most important products and or serves, now you have to start thinking about the questions on your page, the auto response when you get messages via messenger and connecting your page to a Whatsapp button. Last but not the least the jury is out about the importance of maintaining an active Google+ Business Page these days if you’re not a local business. That said, given Google’s massive empire, we think it behooves all businesses to play it safe and create a Google+ Page, even if you only update it every so often. Setting up and maintaining a Google+ Page goes hand in hand with your Google My Business listing (see above), making Google+ even more critical for you. And considering your Google My Business listing will include a link to your business’ Google+ Page, it’s important to take some extra time to make your page the best it can be.

Facebook sells ads based on what it knows about you. That’s its core business. Most sites on the internet do the same. When you click on an ad that you see on the web, Google remembers what the ad is about, and adds that data to your advertising profile. Google’s estimation of your interests, based on your sex, age, location and other data that it has about you. Now that we are clear on the latter, the issue at hand is if you have the inhouse resources to attend to your business various online portals? A major misconception when it comes to online marketing a business online is that it requires no skill, no effort, no time and most of all anyone will create the expected results.

Don’t have the time or energy to micromanage social media accounts? It may be time to look into a new website developer. The right website can help you establish a strong web presence, sell online and reach new customers. And with support from the experts at a reliable company like Corporate Axtion, you’ll be able to stay focused on your business. Contact me for a free online consultation.