Social Media Marketing offers the best tools for free Brand Recognition. Having a social media presence has two major advantages: Firstly, social media profiles can increase traffic to a main website and improve conversions and lead generation. Secondly, utilizing social media allows any business, or marketer, the ability to run free promotions in some of the biggest marketplaces available online today.
What many people often fail to recognize is that social media marketing can help to secure brand recognition, and provides one of the best resources for running free market research and gaining a valuable insight into what the average consumer needs and wants right now.
Social media is all about real-time information, and used wisely, this content can be a lucrative addition to any business strategy and can influence future project development. There are three main criteria that make a social media marketing campaign invaluable to any aspiring business.
Increasing Brand Recognition/Popularity
If a business, or marketer, wants their latest product to be successful, they need to place it in front of as many targeted customers as possible – this is fairly obvious. This could normally involve running a costly advertising campaign – or maybe a lengthy SEO project, hoping to get their product website ranked by a search engine.
Social media provides a free platform for finding targeted customers and placing the brand or product right before their eyes. Using the free search tools to locate topic-relevant persons, or simply submitting product-related content to social bookmarking platforms, a business can easily place their products in front of a huge audience and even supply direct links to the main product website.
Free Real-Time Market Research
Social media provides the platform for a business or marketer to gain valuable research on two levels. Social media users love to talk about forthcoming products or services and often discuss the latest hot topics and what is good or bad about the current products available. This valuable insight allows a business to predict potential trends and stay ahead of the competition. It also offers the opportunity to piggyback on current products and supply ‘new and improved’ versions – minus the commonly discussed flaws.
The other market research potential is for businesses that are currently promoting a product, or service. Often, companies will provide feedback forms for current customers to have their say about the pros and cons of a product. Social media provides this form of customer feedback in real time and without the need for unnecessary paperwork.
Users will discuss the promoted products and will give impartial opinions that can be used to improve or adapt the product. A business, or marketer, can ask their customers questions via their social media accounts and discover what they think can be done to improve a product, what they are looking to buy next or if they would consider buying a particular product if it were made available to them.
Promote Expertise and Increase Visibility
Having a social media profile allows a business the chance to provide valuable information to a large audience. These could be potential customers that would have never heard this information otherwise. Social media offers the opportunity for a business to establish itself as an expert in its particular market and become the preferred source of information for many social media users.
These users could pass this information on to friends, or even better, direct their friends to the businesses social media profile. These readers could have blogs or post on topic-relevant forums and may provide free promotion for the business on these. By being seen as an expert, any quality posts have the potential of going viral and if the post contains links to the main product website, this will lead to increased traffic to that site.
Social media is so established that most people now expect a respectable business to have a social media profile. Having a profile shows that the business is in touch and likely to provide products and services that are up-to-date and relevant.
Social media profiles and posts are indexed and ranked by search engines – this can lead to increased visibility and numerous other search engine placements, in addition to the main product website. Running a successful social media project will place a business and its products or services in front of a massive audience who may never have discovered they existed if it were not for their social media profile.
Social media marketing can provide valuable insights and information that can successfully be used to predict trends and influence future business decisions. These platforms are increasing in popularity every day and offer a valuable business resource. Many businesses and marketers are now seeing the potential of social media marketing but not all are utilizing them to their full business potential. By adopting the above strategies, any business or marketer can stay one step ahead of their uninformed rivals.
Guest blogger Roko Nastic is contributing author /editor at WebmasterFormat.com, a place where webmasters can quickly and easily gather all the necessary info to develop and maintain successful websites. You can also guestblog here and share your social media marketing experiences.
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