Social Media: Are You Doing It Right?

Social Media: Are You Doing It Right? With so much buzz in marketing circles these days about social media, it is important to stop and ask whether or not you are taking advantage of all this dynamic tool has to offer. Social media should be interactive, proactive and timely. It should cover all the bases, meet the demands of consumers and still refrain from taking too much time away from other marketing efforts. Social Media Do's

• Use Every Resource - Make sure to create a page or presence for every applicable social media network. Go to Facebook (www.facebook.com), Twitter (www.twitter.com), Google+ (plus.google.com) and other resources such as LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) and Pinterest (www.pinterest.com). Evaluate each tool to make sure it will benefit your business based upon the industry or niche you are working in and the type of clients or consumers you are trying to reach. The more networks you are involved in, the more exposure your business and brand will receive.
• Optimize Your Pages - Move beyond the basic information requirements of each business page you create within the social networks. Add photos, videos, white papers, products, product descriptions, logos and anything else that will help you market your brand. Your goal is to create a wide-reaching social media marketing campaign that will help you effectively promote what it is that you are selling and create opportunities to interact and communicate directly with clients and customers. Be sure to include additional means for customers to contact you via phone, email and direct web-based messaging.
• Measure Your Results - As with any other type of marketing campaign it is important to measure your results and evaluate your return on investment (ROI) to determine whether your efforts are worth your time and money. Use tools such as Google Analytics (analytics.google.com) or Hub Pages (www.hubpages.com) that will paint a clear picture of your traffic and conversions.

Social Media Don'ts

• Be Inactive - One of the worst things you can do is build a social media page and then walk away. Social media is an interactive form of marketing. It requires daily posts of fresh and unique content that will inspire fans, followers and potential customers to post replies, ask questions, share with friends and "like" or +1 your posts. Prepare to invest some time every day posting and monitoring your accounts.
• Fail to Reply - Another big mistake is to ignore posts, comments, questions and other interactions made by visitors to your social media pages. Check accounts frequently for customer posts and take advantage of social media tools such as Hoot Suite (www.hootsuite.com) and other similar monitoring tools that will alert you when actions are taken or posts are made.
• Waste Time - If you aren't careful you could end up spending a bulk of your day just reading, monitoring and posting to your social media accounts. To avoid this common pitfall, use social media monitoring tools and take advantage of multi-service posting options that allow you to make one post that will appear across two or more social media networks at once.

Social media marketing is expected to continue to grow in the coming months and years. It is important to learn as much as you can about the do's and don'ts of the top social media networks so you can maximize your results with each unique service. Byline This article was written by Karl Stockton on behalf of PC Wholesale. Visit them to take advantage of their great information, such as their information on Sun Memory Upgrades.