Facebook or Twitter will not solve your marketing problem
Social media has been portrayed as the new channel to distribute your marketing messages and to communicate with your customers: the magical formula.
However Facebook, Netlog or Twitter will not solve your marketing or PR problems, as Tara Hunt explains in her presentation below: Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Vlogs, Photosharing, Text Messaging and Instant Messaging aren’t the answer.
Social media problems
The problems with Social Media:
- Doesn’t scale
- Is only band-aid
- Is about being social
The main intention to use social networks is for having friends, relations and sharing experiences, but not for finding products. It is not the best environment to receive marketing messages.
The question you have to ask yourself:
Are your potential customers using any Social Media?
Do they read anything online or do they have links online?
Especially in case your business is selling to businesses.
Instead of Facebook, LinkedIn comes probably the nearest to using Social Media for businesses as this presentation on LinkedIn demographics shows:
Besides LinkedIn there are also: Xing, Viadeo, ecademy, Ryze, Social Business Club to be used depending on geography and industry.
There are many advices on the Internet explaining how to use LinkedIn for your business.
If the typical customer your are selling to is not using any of the Social Media available then you will not be able to reach them using Social Media.
If they don’t read blogs and don’t know how to subscribe to a RSS feed, then there is hardly a benefit for writing blog posts or posting comments on blogs. Don’t even think about Tweeting on Twitter.
Social media is great for SERP
What remains as the main benefit of using Social Media is the visibility or findability on search engines as Social Media gets indexed faster and has a higher SERP compared to company websites.
Thus if your website is hard to find, start publishing on any Social media you can handle, but think twice before you start a blog.
LEADSExplorer Social Media use
As a web service LEADSExplorer mainly uses this blog (and hope every blog post gets bookmarked or copied for further distribution), Twitter (added Tweetmeme buttons to the blog) and presentations (upload to Scribd, Slideshare and Authorstream) for creating presence and findability on the Internet.
Conclusion Social Media in B2B
Social media is just one of the tools and channels marketing can use to communicate and influence the potential buyer if the buyer is using these Social Media for his business.
The best is LinkedIn or similar but not Facebook.
In case not one of your potential customers is on LinkedIn or any other Social Media: then the only benefit is the increase of findability on search engines.
Thus stick with your traditional channels like Press Releases, advertising and (paid) editorials.
What is your experience using Social Media for your business?
Or you haven’t used any yet? Then it is great you are already reading this blog post.
I feel like I am the only one these days that has NOT went to social media sites to market and promote and my business. To me, social media is all about being social and connecting with friends and family. I am sure it can be a boost in some ways, but it’s just not for me.
I just don’t believe in the social media world as a marketing niche at all. It’s called social media because it is about chitchatting, having fun, hanging out, etc. It’s not about buying a product.
When Facebook and Twitter first hit the Internet, there may have been the chance of making some money. But now, everyone and their brother are using these sites as marketing tools and no one is paying attention. If you have an account on either site, whens the last time you clicked an ad?
[...] creation. Now you need mainly creativity and inspiration to reach your target customers. Still social marketing will not solve your marketing problems as it is only a part of the complete [...]
Came across your post as I was looking for press release related info. Very nice post. Hope to learn more from you.
Good post, nice info. One of my favorite topics, very few good writers out there.
This is really interesting. Thanks for the post.
There are a lot of people who uses social site to market their product and business.
@Orrymain – yes, it surely is for having fun.I guess they are doing it because there are many people who are part of social sites. It is like they are just fishing in a pond full of fish. It will only depends on how good they are in fishing.