Entrepreneurs and small business owners believe using social media to market their business is a waste of time. They believe this because they think every minute spent on social media should equal a dollar amount in return. And that’s not all; they expect every Facebook like or Twitter follower to equal a dollar amount too.
I am not sure where business owners have been trained (or brainwashed) to think the success of social media can only be measured by money received. Success cannot be measured properly without taking other factors into account.
Ironically, you cannot turn on the television or radio without seeing or hearing Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and now even Pinterest logos. You will see the social media logos practically on every commercial, including on the local and national news as well as most of the television shows.
You may have noticed how baseball, football, basketball, tennis and so many other sports are on the social media craze too. And if it’s a live reality show like; Dancing With The Stars, American Idol, and others they will display a Twitter hashtag on screen during the entire episode so they can show the tweets almost instantly.
So if you believe social media is a waste of time or struggle to find its true value for marketing your business, before you stop using it understand this…
You have to be visible.
A business can’t be successful if no one knows about it. No matter the size of your business, you must market and promote it to be successful.
Big businesses with big marketing budgets see the value of using social media marketing. They understand they can use social media to build, connect, engage and influence their target audience by driving internet traffic in ways other marketing and advertising cannot do.
People buy from people they know, like and trust.
Long before your visitors are ready to buy, (95% of them won’t buy during their first visit to your website) they will do what they can to get to know you. This can include liking your Facebook page, following you on Twitter or watching your YouTube videos.
They will use the information you post on social media to determine if they like you and trust you. Marketing has changed so much without having an online presence how would leads and potential clients effortlessly do this?
That’s why using social media to encourage your visitors to know, like, and trust you is an absolutely required step for turning website traffic (filled with potential clients) into paying customers.
It’s working but you don’t know it!
Monitoring and measuring results are a must! Why? Tracking results will give you the information needed to make decisions of what strategies you should do more of or stop doing completely.
Unless you can say for sure, you know:
- where your website traffic is coming from
- what your traffic read or clicked on
- if they joined your mailing list or purchased a product
Then it’s not possible to say you don’t believe social media marketing does not work.
It’s okay to have believed this you are not alone, many business owners do until they hire me to look at their website and online marketing strategy.
When clients hire me to work with them for personal coaching looking at their website, their online marketing strategy, their traffic numbers and everything they are doing to build their business, they final get it!
As you grow your website and build a big online presence, remember this simple fact:
“It is your responsibility to stay on the top of your leads mind and not their responsibility to remember you exist.”
This is the key to using your social media marketing to drive non-stop traffic to your website. Learn how to do this… and you’ll leave your competition in the dust and never worry about finding leads again.
It’s time to make social media less overwhelming and more successful. Sign-up for my free webinar to learn how to find out which of your social media efforts are working and which are not. Grab your free seat to “Insider Secrets to Get More Leads and Spend Less Time on Social Media” here>>>
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Photo courtesy: WingedWolf
There are plenty of proof points to demonstrate that social media works for business. I think the biggest issue is while there are examples of success, there is not a lot of detailed information about how that success was achieved with social media. Much of the how-to information is vague and often isn’t much more than “use the social sites, connect with people, and viola – success”. So small businesses dabble in it, get frustrated, and abandon it (somewhere I saw a stat that there are now more inactive blogs than active ones) When I first started, I was told you have to do Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. but figuring out how to use them effectively to meet my goals has been a struggle. I dreaded the arrival of Google+ and Pinterest. I thought to myself “more social media and I still am not effective at all the others yet” – and I’m sure other people think that too. What’s missing is clear and specific ways to handle social media.
Welcome Cynthia!
You make some very valid points however there is plenty of information and step-by-step guides to using social media. In fact, you can find a few right here on my blog. What business owners are missing is not monitoring the traffic they receive from social media they simply don’t realize they are getting traffic. What I have found in too many cases they just don’t look at their analytics frequently or at all. And they simply think using social media takes to much time.
What they don’t realize is waiting for traffic, leads and sales takes even more time. So what ends up happening is they blindly post content once or twice a day which is not enough to be top-of-mind, so they think strategy is not working. The other thing business owners need to realize is social media success does not happen over night, you have to be strategic and consistent to see results.