The term Social Media most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction through the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. 

Social media marketing on the other hand is the practice of identifying and engaging with people who are interested in your industry and ultimately your products and services.  By facilitating discussions and sharing valuable content, this practice increases brand awareness of individuals and organisations.  

There are two main ways (or reasons) organisations can leverage social media.  The most common is for brand awareness.  Social media will allow you to get in front of your customers based on their age, demographics, region, interests, marital status and more!  Traditional forms of internet marketing are limited to marketers only being able to reach their audience based on keyword phrases or geographic region.  However, with social media becoming such a powerful online network, organisations can now promote their products and services in a much more tactful and focused way.

According to a study conducted by Marketing Sherpa which surveyed small to medium sized businesses in December of 2008, ‘Lack of Knowledge’ is the most significant barrier to social media adoption.  There is a lot of ‘buzz’ around the term social media, and although companies today are becoming more familiar with the concept, there is still that burden of understanding how to monetise social sites like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc. for business purposes. 

This leads to the second method in which companies today are leveraging social media, which is strictly for organic purposes to get rankings in the search engines.  The technical term to get listed on page one of the search engines for a specific keyword phrase is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  However, the challenge with SEO is that it is a long term approach, and depending on the keyword phrase selected and the number of competing sites for that phrase, it can take several months to even over a year to see results. 

This is where social media comes into play – as internet marketing consultants can combine social strategies to help get your website, your videos, your blog postings, your tweets, etc. listed directly in the search engines.  Google is the leading search engine, and it is no surprise that they are constantly displaying social sites in their search engine results page (SERPS).  More often users are seeing videos appearing in the search results from sites like YouTube when performing a search on sites like Google.  This process of having your video displayed on page one is called video optimisation, a process of a social media campaign strategy.

There are several reasons as to why a company may decide to leverage social media.  It may be to connect with their existing customers, receive feedback, provide interaction, collect information, target prospects, dominate search engines, or simply create more awareness around their brand.  However, it is important for organisations to understand where to market themselves on social sites, and where to start that conversation. 

Contact us on 01323 416999 to help strategise a social plan that will work with your business objectives.