Aug 14, 2013
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Social Media Requires Being Social
You may be wondering why every business today has a Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram and a whole host of other social networking icons on their home page but some businesses seem to do better than others. The answer to this phenomenon is simple on the outside but complex inside. The short answer is that all businesses WANT free marketing that social networking can provide for them. The more complicated answer is that nothing in life is free, even if it doesn’t cost money.
When you think of traditional marketing you might think of cold calling investors in the phone book, or using television or billboards as a means of developing new clientele. These methods typically require upfront cash but require little work and little REAL connection with their audience. Social media networking (and marketing) doesn’t cost money upfront unless the company is hiring people to do the work for them.
The biggest difference between the two methods though, is the concept of building and maintaining a real relationship with the audience. When you form a relationship with your clients, a true form of loyalty develops in a way that simply was not possibly with traditional marketing. In the past, advertisers and marketers spent their time trying to “make old products feel like new, and make new products feel familiar.” When you have a true relationship with your audience, you don’t have to spend as much time, effort, or money on creating buzz about new (or old) products because your clientele will simply choose your products because they trust and respect your company. This does not mean that traditional marketing is not still important. It is, but it serves a different purpose than relationship marketing.
As mentioned previously, social media marketing does not cost cash upfront but in order to develop that real communication and relationship with your audience it does require significant time contributions to keeping up with social networks. Quick responses on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram show that you are really paying attention to the real needs of your client. Better yet, companies who are truly successful with relationship marketing take the needs and wants of their followers into consideration when launching new products or creating the marketing strategy for the following year.
For businesses to have a connection with their social media followers, it is essential that they develop real relationships with their clients. Auto posting should be avoided whenever possible to keep the contact human to human and to allow the audience to feel loyalty to a person rather than a faceless corporation. The creation of nostalgia is one of the most effective ways for people to remember a brand; effective relationship building with your target market can create that nostalgia.
How will you stay social with your social media?