Social Media Marketing: Why Do You Need It?

Dec. 4, 2009 - PRLog -- Many companies view social media as another outlet to pump their marketing messages into, especially marketing companies that have had success in other areas of marketing such as SEO, PPC, email advertising, or traditional media marketing outlets like television advertising, radio advertising, or print advertising.

Facebook fan pages, MySpace accounts, Twitter streams, blogs, YouTube channels, Digg submissions, Flickr accounts, Wikis, even rating and review sites are all social media marketing tactics you see commonly touted as efforts companies should be doing. But have you ever stopped to ask why?

Why should your company have a Facebook fan page? Is it because everyone else does? Maybe your competition does?

While it may seem cool to be able to say that you have all of these different social media accounts, you have to ask yourself if these marketing tactics are what you need to be doing to be successful in social media?

It's very common to create a MySpace account or Facebook fan page because it's free, easy, and everyone else is doing it. While New Jersey marketing companies should secure accounts on social media sites for their clients or brand names, they shouldn't just devote massive amounts of time to one particular social media marketing tactic just because of the above three reasons.

Implementing social media marketing tactics for any reason without a good strategy in place will ultimately lead to confusion and disappointment in your efforts in the social media game.

If any full service ad agency, public relations agency, or search marketing firm comes to you and says that you need a Facebook fan page without any reason other than that it's new, you need it, and they know how to do it for you, then you might want to stop and ask yourself why you're using that advertising agency.

Your full service ad agency might explain to you a handful of social media tactics that they will claim you should use employ as a strategy. However, its usually more of a bunch of tactics that they want to be paid for rather than a strategy.

But it should always come back to answering why you should be doing this.

Social media strategies involve much more than just putting the accounts together. The members of social media communities want valuable and quality content. If you have that, you will be a trusted source of information for your service/product.

So what exactly does a social media strategy involve? Here are some simple questions you should consider before wildly deploying social media marketing tactics.

   * Answer the Question of "Why?": Your social media strategy should fully tell you why you're using a particular tactic. Is it because your audience is there and interacting already? Is it because the potential for branding and exposure is there?
   * How to Deploy a Strategy: How do you gain respect in social media? Do you go in guns blazing, or do you sit back and get a feel for what you're about to embark on? Is it an approach of asking questions first and then offering advice? Do you want to ask for submissions from the audience or start by writing valuable content? Your strategy should fully answer these questions before you start.
   * Defining Your Goals and Measuring Analytics: How do you know your efforts are doing anything? What is your company expecting as a return on your time and resources spent on your marketing efforts in social media? If there isn't a clear set of goals to be measured for your efforts, how can you justify your tactics? Do you have clear ROI for your social media efforts?
   * When to Should You Re-evaluate?: Some New Jersey marketing companies sometimes forget to define when they should re-evaluate their efforts. But what if something isn't working, and you aren't meeting your goals? What if something else is working really well? Set points in your strategy for re-evaluation. Remember, nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to social media marketing.

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BOC Partners is a traditional media and online advertising agency located at 1030 South Ave West, Westfield, NJ that has been around for 25 years. Visit us at http://blog.bocpartners.com, http://bocpartners.wordpress.com, or http://www.bocpartners.com.