Marketing with a Flair

Remember when your mom used to say, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge…would you?” Well, it seems everyone is jumping off the traditional marketing and advertising bridge into the cool, refreshing, yet tumultuous waters of social media. Have you taken the plunge? Why or why not?

Being completely immersed in the social media culture may be the hip popular thing to do, but make sure you’re asking yourself, “Is being on Facebook, Twitter or one of the many numerous rapidly growing social networking sites right for my business?” Here are some things to consider.

Time: Managing your social network reputation can be a full time job. Just look at this statement by Guy Kawasaki, social media and marketing guru, “Twitter is my job–albeit a fun job–but a job nonetheless.” Guy Kawasaki and many others are social networkers full time. However, their primary audience is communication professionals, so this is the perfect medium for them. As with any marketing tool, you’ll need to evaluate where your time is best spent.

Target Market: Each social media site has a targeted demographic. Find out what demographic is using each social networking site and determine if this is the right site for you and your business. For example, we know that the 35-54 year old segment is the fastest growing group of users on Facebook and grew at a rate of 172.9% in 2008. When evaluating this information, make sure you are retrieving the most up to date statistics. Social media can and has made drastic changes in a matter of months (Facebook grew faster than any media platform in history from 2006 to 2008).

Goals: You’ll need to begin your social networking endeavor with a specific strategic plan with clearly defined goals and objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you looking simply to add more people to your network? Increase your brand awareness? Increase traffic to your Web site? Or are you looking to improve sales? And more importantly, do you have a way to measure these goals?

Preparedness: Are you prepared to have a conversation with your customers and potential customers? Marketing yourself, your business and/or your product or service means that you must move from a transaction-based effort to a conversation. What will you talk about? What do they need to know about you, your business and/or your product or service?

The key to any successful marketing strategy is determining what will work best for you. As we all know, one size does not fit all. Don’t jump on the bandwagon without a comprehensive plan on what will work and how you will utilize social marketing and measure your results to best stretch your marketing dollars and build your business.