Social Media Marketing — debunking the myths

Marketing is all about story telling — telling your story, the story of your products and services, in the most compelling way to encourage your customers and potential customers that you really, really need this washing powder, this beauty product, this gym membership, this luxury short break (oh, we really do). So what of the stories — dare we say, the myths — told and re-told on blogs, at networking events, about social media — one of the ascendant marketing tools?

As with everything, the key to approaching social media marketing is to do so with a cool head or you’ll find you’ve invested time and money in something that was never going to bring you a return on that investment. Embarking on social media marketing is about taking a longer term view than a one off campaign. Of course, social media marketing can be a valuable tool to support your one off campaigns if you’ve approached your ‘day to day’ social media marketing correctly, building loyalty and brand engagement in a structured, measurable, but that’s for another day.

Part of your digital toolkit

Essentially, we see social media marketing as part of an overall digital toolkit. It can be a valuable and extremely powerful part of your digital toolkit, but the bottom line is that it needs to be viewed against a broader digital marketing canvas. For a start, it’s simply not the case that every business has to be on social media — nor that you have to be on every social network. We do believe that there is value in an online presence for every business, but a careful evaluation may result in a valid determination that, for a particular business, social media marketing is not appropriate. Far better to concentrate on a strong Search Engine Optimisation strategy. Equally, if social media marketing will deliver ROI for your business, choose your networks carefully. It’s certainly appropriate to lock down your brand online by setting up profiles on every network (and on new networks as they appear) to prevent others using your name for their own brand, but make it clear that the profile isn’t active, and direct people to where they can engage on social media.

An investment

Social media marketing is great for building brand engagement and loyalty, for interacting with customers but it’s not great for selling. Nor is social media a free marketing tool. As the networks become more sophisticated, introducing every more complex algorithms, successful social media marketing requires investment both in terms of time, and in terms of money as the networks move to an emphasis on paid marketing and post ‘boosts’. Social media marketing certainly isn’t a ‘quick fix’.

If you’re feeling panicked that your business isn’t leveraging social media as well as the next business, remember that there is no one size fits all approach to social media marketing. Keep your cool, learn to spot the myths and filter out the truths to use to your advantage.