5 False Myths About Social Media Marketing
There are things you’ve read or heard about before, but that those just starting out in online brand promotion still believe.
1.Social media promotion is free or very cheap
It’s true, it costs you nothing to set up a YouTube account, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, even a WordPress blog.
But it does cost you to run an impactful social media campaign, to get noticed, it costs you to create consistently high quality content, it costs you to integrate social media into your company’s marketing strategy.
2.Anyone can do social media marketing
We can hire a communications student, do an internship, or delegate communications through online channels to an existing employee.
However, if that person does not know the rules of social media communication, if he or she does not know how to make full use of existing tools, if he or she does not know how to express him or herself in an appropriate manner that respects the rules of the brand being promoted, we may end up with more to lose than to gain.
Before choosing a person to be the online voice, you should check their online activity: campaigns run for other brands, personal blog, Facebook account, Twitter etc.
3.You can get results in a very short time
Many companies get on social media, set up accounts only to abandon them after 3 months, disappointed that they didn’t get the results they wanted.
Ok, if you already have a well known brand it’s possible to make a quick impact on social media too.
However, if you’re a small company at the beginning you have to work hard to get results.
You need to provide reasons for people to listen to what you say, you need to take the time to network.
In social media promotion it can take as long as 6 months — 1 year to start getting results, assuming you set out with a set of goals and strategies to achieve them.
4.The results of social media activity are hard to measure
Wrong. There are tools to measure the interaction with brand fans, their interest, discussions generated online.
You can count mentions on other blogs, Twitter and Facebook, you can count the traffic growth on the official website and blog.
You can use Google Alerts, Twitter Search, Facebook Page Stats, Google Analytics etc.
5.You need a full-time social media communications person
It’s not absolutely necessary, at least not at first.
You need a skilled person who knows how to operate online and knows the rules of the game, but that person can be a current employee.
However, at least 2–3 hours a day will be needed for online brand activity and monitoring, content creation, plus the person delegated to handle the company’s online image must always have access to the internet to monitor the brand.
You never know when a crisis situation will arise on a blog or a comment that needs to be responded to immediately.
There are no days off in the online environment.
Those would be the most common myths I hear about social media marketing, what additions do you have?
