By Edmond Hong
Publisher, FansBuy.org
Guest Writer

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates had no idea what they had stumbled upon when they launched Facebook for the first time. With 800 million active users today, Facebook has become the king of social networking, being the most used social networking site. And in the past 10 years, not only has it revolutionised the way we communicate, it has also revolutionised the way we do business.

Not too long before the era of social networking, business leaders met and discussed ways to use networking as a way to market their businesses for their own ends. The tradition of meeting with clients, shaking hands, and giving out business cards was what came to mind for them.

Networking has, and always will be one of the most vital parts of any marketing campaign. That hasn’t changed, but what has changed is the fact that business cards are now 140 characters or less, in the form of a tweet, and the hands to shake are now a “thumbs up to like this page” on Facebook profiles. Social media has opened up a whole new world for businesses, unlike what most ever thought imaginable. Growing your company has become as easy and inexpensive as opening up a new tab on your internet browser. And the key to this success: Social media marketing.

In the past, a successful marketing strategy for your small business was relentless and tiring. But over the past 10 years, the boom in the likes of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn has opened up new venues for business that were thought unimaginable before the social networking age. By utilizing social media marketing you can effectively increase exposure, increase your sales, and increase your income. All of the advantages of social media marketing are attainable to any business, large or small, and will not cost you an arm and a leg. To make things even better, this can be achieved practically over night.

Social media marketing gives businesses the opportunity to interact one-on-one with customers and inquirers, allowing you to really sell yourself, and your business to them to gain trust, loyalty, respect, and business. Social media marketing allows you to reach an audience all over the globe without ever leaving your desk, and brings them to you in an instant. Through this, you can certainly expect an increase in sales and forming a solid customer base that will come back to you over others time and time again. At this point in time, social media marketing has been time tested and proved to connect you with target markets and building your businesses reputation. Social media marketing is firmly planted in the basis of creating an interactive, engaging experience that will bring customers back to you time and again, and even leave it up to your customers to get the word out for you to everyone they know.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Creating an effective social media marketing campaign is much more than creating a profile on several social media sites and waiting for the customers to come to you. It didn’t work before social media, and it most certainly won’t work now. The key to success as it has always been is engagement. When you engage, you’re proactive. You’re putting yourself on the frontlines with your customers, which is exactly how to use social media to your advantage. Everyone has ideas, opinions, and input. Address those, and you have now created open dialogue with your customers. This attitude is exactly what will take your business to the next level. To put it simply, engagement is the foundation for social media marketing.

The engagement process goes by another name. Social media optimization, or SMO. Social media marketing benefits businesses by giving them the opportunity to hear their potential customers likes and dislikes, their insight, which will in turn give you an idea as to what the people want. A key tool is paying attention to that insight, as this will become a tool to assess your competition’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s not hard to build a loyal customer base and keep an eye (and an ear) on reputation management. Proven time and time again to connect businesses with their target markets and building a name for themselves, social media marketing is very much based on the idea that engaging content will truly encourage people to share it with their friends and colleagues.

To have a higher chance of success in marketing through Facebook, it is essential to have a solid and well designed business page on Facebook.

5 Main Advantages of Social Media Marketing

1. Instantaneous Exposure Brings in More Sales

Imagine this: Your small business has been doing pretty well for itself, acquiring 40,000 friends on the business’ Facebook page. You post one single message on your page, and every single one, all 40,000, will see what you posted. If they like what they see, they will even pass it on to their friends. Through social media, all communication between you and the consumer gets passed on to others, which will immediately increase your business visibility exponentially. Immediate exposure on this level, something unattainable by the older methods of word of mouth, will increase your sales to a degree that you, and many others, never thought possible. As you become more active in social media, and people spread their tweets or tell their friends about this brand new website that they found, your brand gains recognition and visibility that can outperform a full front page spread in the New York Times. This important new age “word of mouth” advertising is absolutely essential for creating hype about your products and services. The true beauty of social media is its ability to reach thousands upon thousands of customers instantly. This is viral marketing in its purest form. For small businesses, this is huge, as it directly translates into increased sales and profit. One principle of business in this case remains the same: The more customers you reach, the more products you sell.

2. Optimizing Your Search Engine Ranking

Everyone knows the benefits of improved search engine ranking. No matter how amazing your website is, that alone can and will not help your website be seen. What it really boils down to is search results. In fact, most consumers who use the internet to aid them in their search for businesses actually do not bother to read any links further than those on the first page. Your social media site page, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn provides backlinks to your website. These links are especially important for climbing up the rank on search engines, making it all the more likely that someone searching will stumble across your website on that first page. Always remember that if your site gets more traffic, then you will reach a larger targeted audience. If you reach a larger targeted audience, your sales will increase.

3. Saving Money

An effective, optimized social media marketing campaign can greatly benefit your small business by providing you with effective and proven marketing strategies that cost only a percentage of what traditional advertising and marketing would cost you. No ads to print out, no phone calls to make, just typing away on the keyboard. Creating a Facebook page for your business is extremely simple and straightforward, requiring little to no effort, and only a basic knowledge on how to fill out forms, as well as write a good “About Me”. Using Facebook for business marketing is completely free, and once you have established your page, you can buy Facebook fans to instantly create traffic for you page, or you can grow your fan base through solid content and perseverance. If you have a personal Facebook page, you can even begin from there and get the word out to your friends and family. Using Facebook for business is simple, arguably moreso than using it for personal use, and is an inexpensive marketing tool and strategy that can have dramatic results.

4. Build a Core Fanbase

Small business success relies heavily on building core supporters. Core supporters are those who will always choose your products over anyone else’s, no matter how much more they have to pay. They are loyal and utterly committed to your business above all others. Blogs with useful information, or several posts on Facebook or Twitter, done on a regular basis, is a very easy way to establish a network of loyal supporters who will constantly bring you new business by referring friends, family, and colleagues.

Here’s how to do it. Regularly posting comments or insightful information lets you and your business directly interact with customers and potential customers, establishing a relationship with them. Consumers enjoy this type of interaction because it feels “personal”, and they don’t feel as if they are being targeted by slogans or speaking to a door-to-door salesman. The logic behind all of it is that the more interaction you have with the consumers, the deeper the loyalty develops and becomes, and from this a well-defined, targeted customer base begins to grow.

5. Building New Business Partnerships

Another of the wonderful benefits of social media marketing is an ever increasing base in profitable business partnerships. By investing just a little bit of time, small businesses in particular, can create strong and important cooperative relationships with other businesses that can be highly beneficial, as well as highly profitable, to both. The network of contacts you’ll establish through social media activity will expose your business to a large variety of related business that could possibly go hand-in-hand with yours.

The key to maintaining a successful social media campaign is to know what audience you’re targeting, and to communicate something of value to them directly. Make sure to keep the conversation going both ways, keep it personal, and steer clear of any sort of automated response. If it’s something they’re interested in, they will be more than willing to engage. The strength of your social media campaign will strongly determine whether or not your targeted audience will seek you out on all of your social media channels to gain a chance to get acquainted with your business better.

You should definitely plan on investing some time. It’s simple, but it won’t literally happen overnight. If you gain nothing else, a successful social media marketing campaign will help you understand your customer base better. In the best case scenario, you can increase sales dramatically and truly develop your brand. Take the time to invest in your customers, and they will take the time to invest in you, tenfold, by spreading the word.

To sum it all up:

A well designed social media marketing campaign, especially for small businesses, can have tremendous benefits, including, but not limited to:

• Increase exposure for your business (a vital necessity for small businesses)
• Increased sales (as stated earlier, the more customers, the higher the sales)
• Increased savings (SMM costs next to nothing compared to traditional marketing)
• Improved search engine rankings (brings more traffic to your site, which ultimately leads to more sales)
• Builds a core customer base (extremely important for small businesses to gain credibility and establish legitimacy).

Notes on the Author:

Edmond Hong is a renowned and established expert on small business marketing. Mr. Hong earned first class honors in both Civil Engineering and Business Marketing from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Many of his articles have been featured in the New York Times, as well as The Age Australia, Business Section. He also owns a website that allows businesses to increase their social credibility in short period of time by buying fans on Facebook. Currently, he lives in St. Kilda, Melbourne, and spends his leisure time writing books on marketing and coaching established and up and coming entrepreneurs.