When managed appropriately and in conjunction with native paid advertising systems, for instance, purchasing Facebook ads in addition to managing an engaging Facebook business page, social media presents some interesting and potentially powerful marketing applications. When embarking on a social media marketing campaign it is important to put emphasis on the word “social” and to act accordingly. For instance, it is not appropriate to harass fellow users with constant posts and messages, just as it would not be appropriate in the real world. Annoying marketing techniques of any kind will only backfire terribly and will end up compromising your credibility and driving people away. So how does a business successfully enter and engage in the world of social media? To answer the question, a business must engage and interact on an authentically human level and use the social network to organically find its useful niche in the ecosystem. So how do you do that?

Well, let’s see if we can come up with any ideas. A company could, for example, decide to start using their Facebook page for customer service related communication, and to follow up and perhaps send private thank you messages to recent customers. They could ask for feedback from recent customers and then personally follow up and thank the customers for their feedback. Again, the key to all these messages would be authenticity and the human connection. If a customer felt that they could truly interact with a company on Facebook, that would be a potentially powerful paradigm shift, and good things might just happen. It’s good to remember that a social network is a “network” of people who interact with each other and information and even feelings can spread very quickly when the conditions are right.

Now, let’s say a company is organically communicating and “socializing” with their customers on a network such as Facebook. At this point they can begin to place strategic paid advertisements using the Facebook native advertising system to “appropriately” market their products or services. When people click through from the ads they will notice that the company is a credible part of Facebook and they will be much more receptive to the intended marketing message. We can help you setup professional looking social media pages and we can provide coaching and consulting to help you manage the entire campaign. If you don’t want to be hands on, we can even manage your entire social media program for you, so let’s talk now about how social media could work for you and your business.