WAHM PLR Blog

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If I had a dollar for each time someone said that social media was a waste of time, I would be Midas’ little sister right now. I have heard this mostly among work at home business people and small business owners and I understand why. If you have invested a lot of time to Facebook or Twitter and have not seen a lot of results, it is easy to think that all social media networks, including Google + is just a waste of your valuable time. And you will not be alone in that assertion. In fact, a recent survey of small business leaders carried out by Hiscox, a small business insurance company found out that 47 percent of them do not use social media for business purposes at all.

But the fact that you did not get results when you tried promoting your business on any of the social networking sites does not mean that they are a waste of time. It could just mean that maybe you were not using these sites the right way. That is not the fault of the social media networks; like any tool, you need to learn the correct and optimal way to use these sites. For those with a limited marketing budget, social media can be your best friend but first you need to learn how to leverage the wonderful potentials.

There are reasons why people have said that social media marketing does not work and if you are one of those with that opinion, your reasons are probably valid. With social media it is almost impossible to calculate your return on investment (ROI). Updating your status, replying comments, sharing content – these all take up too much of your time. An author with a blog actually lists a number of reasons why social media is a waste of precious time and says that while 2-3 hours of entertainment on social media is fine, any more will be a total waste. And I agree with her to some extent. If all you are doing while on social networking sites or making use of other social media is entertainment then she is right; it would be a colossal waste of time. But you are business people and what others might consider a waste of time, you know is market research. Here are examples of what this blog author called ‘time wastage:’

Kids going to school, teenagers going to college are spending most of their time in chit chatting with their friends, playing online games onto the social media sites. FB, twitter etc sites are in some way or the other is a type of addiction. We share each and every minute information over there like- Out of town.., Its so boring here.., Going for a date, etc.

This is where the strength of social media comes in; it allows you to discover the addictions of your niche market and create products to satisfy those. Waste of time? I think not. This is where a lot of people miss it with social media marketing (SMM). As a small business owner, you spend time marketing so that you can increase sales and when you do not see immediate results it is tempting to give up on SMM completely and no one would blame you. But SMM works and a real life example comes from Niall Harbison and Lauren, the owners of Simply Zesty a blog that teaches how to use free online tools to grow your business. This is how they summarize their experience with using social media:

Social media is cheap and allows you to meet people in a fraction of the amount of time that it would take in “the real world”. If you don’t have a budget and things are tight you should have a look into using social media to market your business, it’s hard work but it does work.

And they are right; it really does work however before you make the decision to forget SMM you need to first of all understand what it is all about.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Different marketers have differing definitions of social media marketing but after reading up of many others and from my own experience, this is my definition of social media marketing:

Social media marketing is a way for businesses to promote their products and services by building brand recognition through relationships with their target audience.

I deliberately highlighted certain words because they are crucial to what social media marketing is all about. If you are operating as a business on a social media site you need to take your eyes away from short-term sales. What you are after is long-term repeat sales and you do not achieve that by bombarding your audience with sales copy. If all your updates are ‘buy this’ and ‘buy that’ then you are quickly going to lose a following or get tuned out. There are several voices shouting to be heard in social media sites; how do you stand out of the crowd and reach your audience?

First you need to identify your target audience. If you are a home business selling beauty products or anti-aging products, there is no point marketing your business to a group of building maintenance professionals. It isn’t that they don’t use beauty products but that is just a gamble. You will have better results marketing to young college students or moms. So know who your target audience is.

Once you have identified your target audience, you need to build a relationship and that does not happen if all you are doing is selling to them. These days, people prefer to buy things from those they have a sort of relationship with. This involves commenting on their posts, sharing their content and sharing helpful tips and content. The Golden Rule with social media is to remember that it is not all about you. Before I go into how you can use social media for effective results, let’s first of all establish why you need social media.

The internet is full of a lot of great free resources and one of the sites I like to go to for resources on marketing is Inbound Media University. One of the major names in social media marketing, Chris Brogan delivered a great lecture which I would like to share with you. Some highlights from that lecture include this quote:

“Community is not really about you, your product or anything else related to your goals … except insofar as you serve to power theirs”

Social Media and Building Community (GF201)

Why You Need Social Media Marketing

Notice I did not say ‘why you might want to try social media marketing’ but why you NEED it. And if you are the owner of a home based business, you do need social media marketing. SMM is a tool that several large organizations and established companies are leveraging for all it’s worth. A good example is Coca Cola. For a lot of these companies, their marketing budget is larger than several home businesses combined, yet they still make use of SMM. If these large companies, with their huge marketing budgets, are still making use of SMM, which is largely made up of free tools why should you not make the most of SMM? As a home business owner, you stand a better chance of making more of an effect on social media than most big companies. Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner created this report on how marketers are using social media to grow their business. The report stated that from the surveys carried out, the number one benefit of social media marketing is standing out in an increasingly noisy world. Read the report below.

Social Media Marketing Report 2011

Now on to the benefits:

• Social Media is Free: If you are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +, you do not have to pay a dime for these services. They are free and provide a great platform for marketing your products. As a work at home mum working as a freelance writer, I did not have the dollars to advertise my skills on the web so I turned to social media. Even when I grew and needed to hire writers for my team, social media made it possible to get good writers without spending anything to advertise.

• Social Media Presents a Level Playing Field: It doesn’t matter how many thousand dollars big company has for marketing, when it comes to social media they are on the same level as those who have no money for marketing. It is a level playing ground; we all have the same opportunities available to us.

• Social Media Gets You Directly to Your Target Audience: And this is probably one of the most valuable benefits of SMM. With social media sites, we can interact directly with our target audience and get to know how we can solve their unique problems. Just a tip: Your product or service should be built around serving a need or you might find any kind of marketing a waste of time.

• Social Media Lets You Build a Community: Some of the greatest friends I’ve made have been through social media; Facebook, Twitter and blogging. You can build a community of people who are interested in you and what you have to offer. They care when your child is sick, when you are down with a cold or when you need to raise money quickly through a sale. They do this for you because they know that you also care about them. Social media creates an avenue for relationship building like we haven’t had before.

• You can build a brand and get a loyal brand following: People do not care about what you have to say until they know how much you care. Okay, so that’s a cliché but like all clichés, there is more than an element of truth there. Fact is, people don’t want to buy from just anyone. They prefer to buy from a brand they can identify with. I heard this analogy from Tiffany Dow; she basically says that although you want to buy a Ford and that is a brand, you will most likely choose to buy it from the Car Sales man who runs a friendly business, gives you great deals and has a great attitude. Or something like that anyway. Social media makes it possible for you to communicate your mission statement and to actually live it.

• Create Significant Partnerships: Business is all about collaboration. No matter how good you are, you cannot make it on your own in business. We all need partners at some point or the other. If you are a work at home mom meeting people you can form partnerships with can be a challenge. Or it used to be a challenge before social media came in and made things that much easier. However you need to market yourself and your business because that is how your potential partners can get to know you.

How Can You Effectively Make Use of Social Media to Market Your Business?

2. Build relationships: go out of your way to reach out to people. Retweet other people’s tweets. Link to posts from other bloggers in your blog post. Tag people on Facebook. Join relevant groups on LinkedIn and get to mingle with people. Be genuinely interested in others and learn to offer help.

Tips for Using Social Media to Market Your Small Business