Social Media Based Marketing Strategies

With the information revolution and mass followings for the Web 2.0 based technologies and applications, most business's have to depend on Internet Marketing strategies not only to remain afloat but to perform better over the competition. Such strategies may be Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Social Media (SM) marketing. The aim of all these are to "highlight" the web site offering your product / service, make it more 'visible' to search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing and get your web site listed on the first page of the search results, if not right on top.

However, at the implementation level, SEM, SEO and SM strategies differ widely. Web designers, while engineering the web site, often tend to focus on the visual appeal, aesthetics, use of quality photos and videos, color schemes, fonts etc and may ignore the user-friendliness, ease of navigation etc. to the web browsing public. More often than not, it is not easy to change your web site in sight or substance to a major degree. Out of the marketing strategies listed above, the most effective way to compensate or offset any intrinsic faults in your web site, is to depend on SM strategies.

Social media is all about spreading news by "word of mouth", it is about building, nurturing and maintaining 'relationships'. In order to understand the dynamics of SM marketing, it is essential to understand the 'niche' or 'target', a group of people using the Internet based techniques, best suited for the product or service range you are offering. Research methods are available to identify, cultivate and lead-on your 'target' group, which are done by specialists offering such services, who study your web site, product brochures. catalogs, flyers etc and also those of the competitors, to pin point "what the browsing audience is looking for", " what words or phrases are used for their search" and device methods to enhance the number of such 'hits' to your web site. Most popular SM sites include Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Blogs, Orkut, YouTube and LinkedIn listed in random order. Having established your 'target' the five basic strategies to be followed to maximize your profits are listed underneath.

First is to remember that social media is all about 2-way "communication"; if you do not follow up your target's queries, they are likely to drift away from you. Second, is to "comment" objectively and constructively on conversations with carefully chosen and precise, yet truthful words to convey your responses. Thirdly, build a "community" of people who are best suited to understand and subsequently promote your business by lateral networking . Talk to this community members to fruitfully convey the product or service 'forte'. Fourth is to "collaborate" with anyone, anywhere and if possible anytime, if you are going global. Solicit feedback from the 'community' members and from those who collaborate with you to seek ideas and innovations, which may be utilized effectively in your next product upgrade or revised service. Last but not least is to "contribute" by trying to be helpful in answering any doubts or additional information asked for, re-tweet useful information to all etc. In summary, remember the adage that in Social Media marketing, your "inputs" into the media will decide the "output" you can derive from it.