Chapter 1

Making the Business Case for Social Media

IN THIS CHAPTER

Accentuating the positives and eliminating the negatives

Latching on to the affirmatives

Integrating social media into your marketing plan

Evaluating the worth of social media

In the best of all worlds, social media - a suite of online services that facilitates two-way communication and content sharing - can become a productive component of your overall marketing strategy. These services can enhance your company's online visibility, strengthen relationships with your clients, and expand word-of-mouth advertising, which is the best type.

Given its rapid rise in popularity and its hundreds of millions of worldwide users, social media marketing sounds quite tempting. These tools require minimal upfront cash and, theoretically, you'll find customers flooding through your cyberdoors, ready to buy. It sounds like a no-brainer - but it isn't, especially now that most social media channels have matured into a pay-to-play environment with paid advertising.

Has someone finally invented a perfect marketing method that puts you directly in touch with your customers and prospects, costs nothing, and generates profits faster than a perpetual motion machine produces energy? The hype says "yes"; the real answer, unfortunately, is "no." Although marketing nirvana may not yet be at hand, the expanding importance of social media in the online environment means that your business needs to participate.

This chapter provides an overview of the pros and cons of social media to help you decide how to join the social whirl, and it gives a framework for approaching a strategic choice of which social media to use.

Making Your Social Debut

Like any form of marketing, social media takes some thought. It can become an enormous siphon of your time, and short-term profits are rare. Social media marketing is a long-term commitment.

So, should you or shouldn't you invest time and effort in this marketing avenue? If you answer in the affirmative, you immediately confront another decision: What form should that investment take? The number of options is overwhelming; you can never use every technique and certainly can't do them all at once. In fact, if you're on social platforms that aren't appropriate for your brand, you could be doing more harm than good. Don't worry, though, I discuss how to determine the appropriate places to be online in Chapter 3 of this book. If you take our advice, chances are you won't run into that problem.

Figure 1-1 shows that most small businesses involved in social media use TikTok, with Facebook and YouTube coming in second and third place.

Adapted from Influencer Marketing Hub

FIGURE 1-1: TikTok has taken over as the top social media platform that marketers use.

Defining Social Media Marketing

The bewildering array of social media (which seem to breed new services faster than rabbits can reproduce) makes it hard to discern what they have in common: shared information, often on a peer-to-peer basis. Although many social media messages look like traditional broadcasts from one business to many consumers, their interactive component offers an enticing illusion of one-to-one communication that invites individual readers to respond.

The phrase social media marketing generally refers to using these online services for relationship selling - selling based on developing rapport with customers. Social media services make innovative use of new online technologies to accomplish the familiar communication and marketing goals of this form of selling.

The tried-and-true strategies of marketing (such as solving customers' problems and answering the question, "What's in it for me?") are still valid. Social media marketing is simply a technique, not an entire marketing strategy.

This book covers a variety of social media services (sometimes called social media channels or platforms). The phrase social media site is used to refer to a specific named online service or product.

You can categorize social media services, but they have fuzzy boundaries that can overlap. Some social media sites fall into multiple categories. For example, some social networks and online communities allow participants to share photos and include a blog.

Here are the different types of social media services:

• Social content-sharing services: These services facilitate posting and commenting on text, videos, photos, and podcasts.

  • Blogs and content-posting sites: Websites designed to let you easily update or change content and to allow readers to post their own opinions or reactions.

    Examples of blog tools are WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Medium, and Tumblr. Blogs may be hosted on third-party sites (apps) or integrated into your own website using software.

  • Video: Examples are YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Vidyard, and TikTok.
  • Images: Flickr, Photobucket, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, 500px, Imgur. Figure 1-2 shows how Blue Rain Gallery attracts followers on Instagram by highlighting some of the beautiful works of art it sells.
  • Audio: BlogTalkRadio, Pandora, Live365.
• Social-networking services: Originally developed to facilitate the exchange of personal information (messages, photos, video, and audio) to groups of friends and family, these full-featured services offer multiple functions. From a business point of view, many social-networking services support subgroups that offer the potential for more targeted marketing. Common types of social-networking services include
  • Full networks, such as Facebook and Pinterest. Figure 1-3 shows how SVN/Walt Arnold Commercial Brokerage, Inc. uses its Facebook page to build its brand and enhance community relations.
  • Short message networks such as X are often used for news, announcements, events, sales notices, and promotions. In Figure 1-4, Albuquerque Economic Development uses its X account at https://x.com/abqecondev to assist new and expanding businesses in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area.
  • Professional networks, such as LinkedIn and small profession-specific networks. Figure 1-5 shows how Array Technologies uses its LinkedIn Page to make announcements, impart company news, and attract employees.
  • Specialty networks with unique content, such as the Q&A network Quora, or that operate within a vertical industry, demographic, or activity segment, as opposed to by profession or job title.
• Social-bookmarking services: Similar to private bookmarks for your favorite sites on your computer, social bookmarks are publicly viewable lists of sites that others have recommended. Some are
  • Recommendation services, such as Mix and Digg
  • Social-shopping services, such as OpenSky and Storenvy
  • Other bookmarking services organized by topic or application, such as sites where readers recommend books to others using bookmarking techniques

Some of the major social networks now have their own built-in marketplaces (discussed more in their respective books), so there's the added benefit of having everything in one spot - for both your customers and yourself from a social media management perspective.

• Social news services: On these peer-based lists of recommended articles from news sites, blogs, or web pages, users often vote on the value of the postings. Social news services include
  • Feedly
  • Reddit
  • Other news sites
• Social geolocation and meeting services: These services bring people together in real space rather than in cyberspace:
  • Foursquare
  • Meetup
  • MapMyFitness
  • Other GPS (Global Positioning System) applications, many of which operate on mobile phones
  • Other sites for organizing meet-ups

• Community-building services: Many comment- and content-sharing sites have been around for a long time, such as forums, message boards, and Yahoo!.

  Other examples are

  • Community-building sites with multiple sharing features, such as Ning and Mighty Networks
  • Wikis, such as Wikipedia or WikiHow, for group-sourced content
  • Review sites, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Trustpilot to solicit consumer views

Courtesy of Blue Rain Gallery

FIGURE 1-2: The Instagram page for Blue Rain Gallery uses strong images to grab viewers' attention.

Courtesy of SVN/Walt Arnold Commercial Brokerage, Inc.

FIGURE 1-3: As part of its community-branding activities, Walt Arnold Commercial Brokerage talks about their annual holiday giving tradition.

Courtesy of Albuquerque Economic Development

FIGURE 1-4: X is an excellent way for Albuquerque Economic Development to announce news about local industry.

As you surf the web, you can find dozens, if not hundreds, of social tools, apps (freestanding online applications), and widgets (small applications placed on other sites, services, or...