Elizabeth Friedland over at TrendyMinds has an excellent post about the concept of social media not being the end-all scheme to push marketing to the masses.
I wanted to bring up my thought on the real value of social media to the small business owner or CEO: Listening. You do not need to get rid of your tradtional marketing strategy. You shouldn’t. Whenever I am in front of a group of people I always say, “If you come to me and say you got rid of your press releases and direct mail pieces and started a Facebook Page. I will never talk to you again.”
So what is a business owner to do?
Learn the tool. Use the tool. Evaluate the tool.
You can either decide to take a class to learn how to implement the tool into your overall strategy or learn the tool yourself using videos from Common Craft. You need to understand the tool before using it. You need to use the tool before implementing it into your overall strategy. If you decide it is a waste of time and money… ditch it. At least you tried.
The important thing to remember is that whether you do it yourself or hire one of the numerous marketing, social media, and new media companies you should be staying ahead of the curve.
1.5 Billion people are connected to the Internet and 300 million use social media. It is an important tool and it will be in the future.
Be strategic. Be thoughtful and listen.
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I have a shed full of tools that I use when I do home improvement projects. I bought them to get a better outcome around the house.
I am now presented with all of the social marketing tools sitting on the internet shelves. I can’t imagine not picking-up and using one or two for a better business outcome.
I didn’t start out competent with the table saw, but after experimenting and seeking some advice, I now feel confident getting my hands into the tool.
Likewise, Facebook is my current table saw learning experience.
I will go to the shed for Twitter next.
I read a post by John Haydon over at CorporateDollar.org about how non-profits need to evaluate WHY they want to use social media tools like Facebook in the marketing/outreach campaigns before they start creating accounts all over the place, and I think that rule should apply to all sorts of organizations, not just non-profits.
Social media is trendy and effective (relatively speaking, of course) and it seems to me as if companies are jumping on the SMM bandwagon without truly evaluating why social media is a tool they want to integrate into their marketing strategy or even how effective it will be in targeting the proper audience.
It’s important that organizations ask these questions before jumping into social media, and that they listen to their competitors and the marketplace to adequately gauge how useful social media can be to furthering the company brand.
Great post!
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