Everywhere you turn, social media is the latest and greatest marketing buzzword. But honestly, why should you care? Do you need it to be successful? Isn't it a fad that will eventually go away? It can't really drive leads for your business, right?
Every business needs a social media strategy, a social media presence and every business needs to understand how social media has become a REQUIREMENT if you want to grow your business. Here are eight reasons why it must be a mandatory part of your marketing program.
1. Your customers and prospects are using it. The numbers are in the hundreds of millions and growing daily. Your target market is included, no matter what industry you are in.
2. Your customers trust it. Yep, they trust it more than you or your website. Because their friends, family, colleagues and trusted advisors are telling them you are great, they trust that advice, much more than hearing about how great you are from your sales team or your website.
3. Google trusts it too. In fact, they trust it more than your website and they are going to be ranking social conversations and social content ahead of your website. So if you want to be ranked, you need to be social.
4. People are looking for information. Buyer behavior has changed. People are researching information first and they are turning to social sites. If you aren't there, your competitors will be.
5. There is power in numbers. There are so many people using social media to share interesting content with each other the numbers are too big to ignore. Regardless of each person's individual network, each connection is worth 20 additional connections. Do the math. Those numbers get big fast.
6. There are enough social sites that it makes sense for EVERY business. You might not need a Facebook page, but there are enough other social sites that you need to considering social media for your marketing. LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter are just a number of the most popular business oriented sites that you must consider.
7. There is huge upside. Handle the content creation creatively and this might be the silver bullet your business has been looking for. All the elements are here to take your business to new heights in very short course. This is how a business goes viral.
8. Content reigns supreme. If you put crappy content out, you get crappy results. But create compelling, creative, engaging content and social media can act as a super highway to introduce your business to millions of potential prospects.
Don't dismiss this simply because you don't use it. Don't dismiss this simply because you don't understand it or are uncomfortable about it. Your business needs this.
ACTION ITEM - Start slow. We know this is complicated and for some of you it might even feel like a foreign language. Speak with a few experts. Be careful, most marketing people are pretending to be social media experts because it is so popular and so many people are so confused. Make sure they have an approach, make sure they are open to teaching you about it and most importantly, make sure they show you quantitatively how it will work for YOUR business. This means exactly what improvements are expected in website traffic, conversions and leads generated. If they can't tell you that, move on to another source.
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