Why Invest in Social Media Marketing?

3 Ways Social Media Pays Dividends

Social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Yelp, YouTube, and President Trump’s favorite–Twitter. There are others, too, of course. Social media offers the biggest quandary for many business owners, CEOs, and marketing directors. They wonder:

• Can we justify the amount of time and staff resources needed to make an impact through social media?
• How will we know whether we are getting results? What are the measures we can use to validate our investment?

Those are obviously good questions. But, when I talk with my clients about social media, I find that it is easier for them to understand the benefits of a social media investment if I help them drill down to the ways that social media builds out their online presence. Here are 3 ways that social media gives a company tactics to expand and extend its marketing message.

1. Use Your Blog–The hub for all social media engagement should be the blog on the company’s website. The benefit is two-fold. First, it allows you to “tease” a post on social media sites, and direct followers to the website’s blog to read the complete posting. That allows for further engagement that can lead to a sale or new business. Second, building out the blog with new content is a great way to enhance and solidify search engine rankings for popular keyword phrases. The search engines love fresh content, and websites that are continually being enriched with new information will meet one of the primary requirements for a page one ranking.
2. Expand Your Online Real Estate–By having pages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., you are extending the presence of your company to other popular websites. What company wouldn’t see value in having a free page on sites that get hundreds of thousands or even millions of visits a day? Of course, if those pages are going to be valuable, they need to have followers. And, to have followers, you need to have interesting information and drive engagement. That requires a strategy and effort.
3. Social Media Advertising–Once you have a blog and social media pages that have been built out with lots of information of value to potential customers and clients, social media advertising can be a good marketing investment. Search engine-based pay-per-click advertising focuses on keyword phrases and online articles with a theme related to the advertiser’s business. In contrast, social media advertising can target potential customers on the basis of demographic data–even when the prospects are not yet looking for the advertised products and services.

Social media is not an end unto itself. Social media is a tool–and a good one. For many service businesses, information disseminated via social media can help build a reputation for expertise. For online retailers, social media engagement can help potential customers find ways to use products, and build a demand for products being introduced for the first time. If a social media posting is used to “tease” and link to more complete information on the company’s blog, it will drive the biggest marketing impact.