Every company has marketing goals that they want to reach. It is an integral part of having a successful business. Without goals, the business can be in danger of simply existing instead of thriving and flourishing. Your marketing goals should be realistic and push your boundaries a bit so they aren’t TOO easy to reach. Growth in a company comes from setting goals that challenge, not goals that are simple and easy. Social media enables companies to reach the marketing goals they have much faster due to the large visitor reach these venues provide.
The potential problem with social media marketing is when a company doesn’t understand a few key points that can either make them or break them with their target audiences:
- Successful social media marketing is about more than “getting the sale”
- Simply having a profile isn’t enough
- The kind of engagement companies have with their customers on their pages can influence sales
- Building a brand with social media takes commitment and focus…and time
Even though these aren’t the only factors involved in successful social media marketing, these DO make up the foundation of it. A company that truly understands the significance of their social reach can work with it to bring a lot of value to their customers and potential customers which will in turn bring more traffic and sales to their company.
Choose the Social Media Venues You Want to Target
There are a LOT of social media venues available to companies now. An overzealous company can set up a profile on every social media site they can find but this doesn’t accomplish much unless those company profiles are nurtured and cultivated. Do some research on where the company’s target audience is hanging out and set up profiles on THOSE sites that your customers are hanging around on. If the time is taken to do this research, the company will be able to tell where to focus their energies.
Because having an active, lively social media page takes focus, consistency and commitment it becomes extremely important to use the ones that will bring the most targeted customers to your site. Below are some of the more popular and well-known social media sites that businesses are using to connect with their customers:
- Tumblr
- YouTube
- Google +
Depending on the nature of your company, it will be fairly easy to determine which of these you will want to set up company profiles on. If the answer is all of them, remember that it takes time to build a social media presence so tackling all seven at once could very well end up as a big disaster with no results to show for it. Take one social media site at a time, set it up correctly and then move on to the next one.
YouTube
A lot of companies are using YouTube to bring in more traffic and visitors to their sites. It can be an excellent marketing tool for your company when used properly. This is where you can have sales videos, product information videos, videos about your company and its employees and other topics that pertain to what your company offers. Be creative and interesting with your YouTube presence and it can get a lot of attention and views.
When you create an account on YouTube, the company will automatically get a channel. A channel is the YouTube version of the profiles that Facebook or Twitter have. The channel can be connected to Google + where you can choose to have whatever you post on YouTube automatically post to Google+ as well.
Channel Trailer – This is a video that you can set up to be automatically shown to non-subscribers, but you have to be verified first. Verification is not an overly complicated process at all, but you will need a phone number for them to send a verification code to. This video trailer will be on your channel home page but once the visitor subscribes to your channel, they will no longer see this channel trailer. It is strictly for non-subscribers, so it can be tailored to new visitors with that in mind. This channel trailer is a great way to introduce new visitors to your company and its products and services.
Subscribers will get their own YouTube customized and generated home page when they click on your company’s channel. This will be based on the company’s videos that the viewer clicks on whenever they visit your channel and will automatically adjust to the viewers habits in regards to your company.
Channel Art – This is the banner that will be seen across the top of your channel by subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Your channel art will need to be in JPEG format, sized at 2560 x 1440 currently although this is frequently updated. If you try to use a smaller size JPEG it will not allow you to upload the art. When you are setting up your channel art banner, you want to make sure that whatever you want visible to the public shows up in the center of your picture.
Channel Links – Each YouTube channel has the ability to add other social media links to the channel art banner. Viewers can click on these links and be taken directly to your profiles on those other social media sites. You can add up to 5 links. Four of these will be clickable icons only and the 5th can be named and will show in text form and will also have the icon of that 5th site. Be certain that your URLs are typed in correctly so the viewers will go to the pages and not get an error page.
Channel Description – This is where you can put in the description of what your channel or you can choose to add the description of your company here. If your channel description is long, all of it may not be visible from the channel home page, but there will be a “read more” clickable link that will open the entire description. Check your spelling here because this is one of many impressions people will have about your company, you want to make it a good one!
