Social Media Marketing Success: Building a Sound Strategy | Vizium360

Topic: Social Media Marketing Success: Building a Sound Strategy

To achieve social media marketing success, you must build a sound marketing strategy, which is a complex task composed of many different facets. Today’s post is designed as a comprehensive summary of elements necessary to plan for social media marketing success.

Why social media?

Social networks are like word of mouth on steroids. Done well, social media amplifies your message and generates market returns, as you can see in the enhanced reach reflected in the image at the start of this post.

However, social media is a two-edged sword as likely to spread the word about your failures and your successes. In fact, studies suggest negative word of mouth spreads 5 times faster than positive. This means your failures quickly reach your market and competitors are only too willing to aid this transmission. And fancy advertising campaigns and reputation management are unlikely to bury these conversations.

So, how do you manage social media marketing to deliver results? Read on.

What you don’t know about social media marketing hurts your brand
So, let’s take a look at the 10 things you don’t know about social media marketing (using the successful guide from Letterman’s top 10, here they are in reverse order of importance):

10. Gurus spending BIG money

Yeah, you got it. All those gurus out there telling you how wonderful social media marketing is and how it’s the great equalizer for small businesses are telling you big, fat LIES.

I’m sure you’ve seen boasts about getting 1 million likes in a few weeks or driving massive traffic with a few easy steps.

Most of these are lies — or at least half-truths. These folks are getting the results they claim, but they’re not telling you they’re spending big bucks. Their results are not organic. Now, the advice might be sound, but don’t feel bad that you’re not getting the same results.

I fell into that trap early on. I was doing everything right, but not seeing the kind of massive returns I was reading about. For instance, one guru got 250,000 email subscribers. I did all the recommended tactics and only got a few thousand. What I didn’t know is this guru was PAYING folks like Guy Kawasaki and other big names some hefty fees to guest blog on his site and create ebooks. He was also paying serious money for PPC ads to promote email subscriptions.

Topic Discussed: Social Media Marketing Success: Building a Sound Strategy