What has always been the simplest way to generate home based business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.
Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive & most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only one 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a confident return on investment. No one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers will make a purchasing decision using the input of friends and family.
Social media marketing supplies the electronic platform for word of mouth marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The common Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out each week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The potential for your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media than any other time in the annals of business. Can your company afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?
If you are like me, you study from making mistakes. However, if you can learn from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are several common mistakes new marketers make when attempting to create and implement a social media marketing plan:
I’ll figure it out when i go- the largest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without the plan. Take time to get educated on social media sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very frustrating and will result in many business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn Luxury Travel Guides of establishing these site, understand the various options, and spend time engaging instead of fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs out there that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.
Let’s add 100 sites in one day- it’s tempting to go out and develop a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at once. But the problem with this strategy is that should you grow too fast, you won’t be able to keep up with all the benefits of each site. The best approach would be to create one site, like Facebook, learn the facts and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and build relationships others. If you start up 12 at once, you won’t be as active as well as your insufficient participation could defeat your current goal. It’s better to have one or two 2 completely utilized social media sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.
Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with individuals who don’t possess complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will see you before they find your website. If they find your site and you have a pic of one’s logo, no pic, or hardly any personal information, then they will likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most importantly, be personable.
Here’s the pitch- here’s the largest stumbling block for some beginning marketers. Once they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This type of media is a huge mistake and you will be ignored if you try out this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices certainly are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield exactly the same failed results. Rather than selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself as an expert in the field in which you are practicing. For example, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself and your site, educate homeowners on which they can do to market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving valuable information, you’ll become an expert on the subject. Then, when the reader is ready to sell his / her house, they will probably ask for your services.
Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, plus some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up the way you post. If you simply put out a blog each day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. Assuming you have a blog 1 day, then put up a straightforward video the next. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you’ll achieve.
Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media marketing activity. This doesn’t mean that you have to make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s easier to have 1 post per day than 3 days with 10 posts.
Do it all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to communicate with people. Having to log into multiple accounts every day to check the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The truth is, it became to time consuming to get this done and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load all of my email accounts into Outlook, I could efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. The same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log from 5 different social media sites each day, it will become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that may allow you to log into all your social media accounts for interactions may be the best way to ensure that you consistently implement your social media marketing plan. Again, there are several good all-in-one social media dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner looking to create a social media plan for your business, then you absolutely should educate yourself on how to utilize the technology and find tools to work with you in the daily utilization. If you don’t know how to create a house and you don’t have a hammer, that house isn’t going to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above in the following paragraphs, you will be able to quickly and effectively create & implement your own profitable social media plan.