Social Media Marketing & Automation
Since social media started out as something that just ‘teens participate in, it was purely ‘social’. They generally don’t have any idea how muchwork it is to cut through all of the white noise that is already in front of the potential clients on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc..
http://www.coastalwebsouth.com/social-media-marketing/
It takes a while, it takes patience, it requires tactical understanding, and it definitely demands skill. Sure, the resources can befree, but even then, they are only free to a certain degree. And if you are paying, you’d better damn well know what you are doing. As somebody who lives in the social networking space, I am surprised by people who presume that what we do, remains purely ‘social’, like it is some sort of ‘add on’ to their present (or non-existent) advertising.
Request that business owner about purchasing ad space in their fast dying local newspaper, and they are all about it. He is not interested in ‘getting his hands dirty’ with each the tweaking and testing, and more analyzing and moretweaking of his promotion strategies. He thinks he’s “spending good money” on somebody who can simply place his promotion on autopilot, and forget about it.
Over a few occasions, I have heard small business owners complain about the expense of hiring somebody to strategize, build and run the chunk of the marketing that’s social media (and let’s face it is not it all social media by now?) I had a conversation with a customer this morning which triggered this particular piece. I think that most those who handle social media for companies big and small would agree with me when I say that handling this marketing aspect for those businesses is anything BUT free.
To his credit, he’s what I call an ‘atypical’ customer, he fully understands both the power of social media (when used properly), and how much WORK one must put in to obtain any sort of traction in this advertising space. Allow me to let you in on a secret; there has been plenty of ‘chirping’ about automation in regards to social networking, but completely automating your social networking marketing is not a good thing. The question always makes me grin. It’s not a fantastic smile.
Learning how to apply strategy to using these “free” tools costs far more than money. It is insane how time consuming it is, and you know how fast those computer minutes can accumulate.