Everyone has heard about social media and social media marketing. The problem is that so many small businesses don’t really know what that means. Even in preparing the content for this page, we had to do some serious reflection on exactly what social media marketing is – and it’s our business! So…
What Exactly is Social Media?
Social media (in our world) is a set of Internet services and websites that make interactivity between like-minded people the centerpiece. Even that was a mouthful! For example, our Twitter user name is Gbroooks (for our founder, G. Harry Brooks). Gbroooks has followed hundreds of other Twitter users, most of whom have a common thread – most are marketers of one stripe or another. So by posting messages to Twitter we can communicate short, punchy messages to a group of like-minded people on the web. We are now “socially” tied to these Internet users.
A Real Example of How Social Media Can Work
In the Winter of 2010 the east coast got hammered with two huge snow storms. One of our clients, who happens to be a professional painting service, found a way to make the most of the heavy snow. Enter the social media marketing plan.
Step one was to draft an email to their existing customers. The email explained that they were providing snow removal services including the removal of gutter ice dams, among other snow removal services. After the email was sent out to existing clients, a blog was written that fully explained the new service availability. Then, the information and new blog post were published to the Facebook business page and Tweeted out to hundreds of Twitter users.
What could have been a week of zero business, turned into a huge week. The phone was ringing off the hook, and customer satisfaction reached all time highs.
By communicating with a group of people, who are interested in what you’re interested in, you can help your business become more visible. One of the added benefits is that because of the informal nature of many social media vehicles, businesses can interact with customers or would-be customers in a way that they might not be able to through a newsletter or the pages of a static website.
Search First will help your business get engaged with the right social media outlets. Most of the time this includes designing and integrating a blog into your website and pushing the content from that blog to sites like Twitter and Facebook. Beyond just setting up the infrastructure, Search First will write your blog content. We’re expert at crafting engaging content for businesses that will help you make the most of your social media strategy.
