Social Media - Social Media Marketing - Social Networking - Social Bookmarking

Social Media Marketing

Social Media is somewhat of a misleading term. Media implies you can control your content as though you were submitting ads to a network or print venue. In fact, the important part of the term is “social”. You cannot control social media just as you cannot control a multisided conversation. Yet Social Media is an effective way to engage your clients and customers – past, present and future.

Benefits of Marketing across Social Media channels:

There are four main reasons for actively pursuing a presence throughout the major social media outlets. They are:

• Customer Acquisition

  - Social Media allows you to continually monitor what people are saying - what they like, what they don't like, where they are, everything. That kind of information is vital in parsing out exactly who you can target with your products and services and who will be most likely to convert. And many times, users of social media and social networking websites know businesses and marketers are out there actively looking for them. So they'll post a question and wait for an answer - and it's those businesses and organizations that engage them first and most effectively that win them over.

• Customer Retention

  - By gathering followers, fans, and friends across a wide spectrum of social media and social networking websites allows for a business to tap into their existing customer base and respond to their opinions, reviews, and questions. What better way of building the integrity of your brand than by bringing your customer service efforts directly to your customers. Rather than making them come to you. After all, there's nothing that erodes customer relations faster than non response.

• Online Reputation Management

  - Social Media outlets are major touch points for reaching consumers no matter where they are in the buyer’s cycle. Whether they are researching, ready to buy, or already used your product or service, having a presence in these venues is a powerful trinity. By monitoring the social cyberspace, you can actively pin point consumers in any part of the buyer’s cycle and react. And you can easily engage those customers who have used your products and services, and who have left their impressions online. By using and monitoring social media and social networking outlets, you can gauge your reach, your brand strength, and see weakenesses and strengths in your products, services, and business as a whole.

• Search Engine Optimization

  - By posting on blogs and forums, leaving reviews, answering questions, writing articles, and how to’s, you are not only leaving an impression where your customers are engaged, but you are also building links to your website. Social Media allows for you to develop one of the best linking building campaigns out there, because the backlinks are free and relevant (when done correctly). Effective engagement in social media is time consuming and daunting, but it’s very effective.

ICND Social Media Marketing Package

Each online social strategy should be tailor made to your business, brand, audience, and market. There are no one-size-fits-all strategies out there. A national travel company would need a far more penetrating and inclusive strategy than a local travel company; just as a local restaurant would need a different campaign from a local shopping outlet in the exact same market. However, each of our social media packages is built on the same foundation, those juggernauts within Social Media (such as Facebook and Twitter) because a presence within those outlets is beneficial across the board. InterCoastal Net Designs and our interactive team can create an online social strategy that fits your company. We can recommend touch points beyond the base that work best for your business, services, and market. We can monitor the cyber-channels, and we can continue to make recommendations and submissions on your behalf. Though we can handle taking a social strategy completely in house, we recommend to all our clients that they at least begin this service by using InterCoastal Net Designs as a consultancy. And here's why:

• No one knows your particular business and customers as well as you do.
• No one has the immediate authority to respond to your customers, especially when responding to a "crisis" or what has been recently coined as a Twitterstorm.
• It's important you strike a "tone" within these social communities that you and your organization is comfortable with. With your sense of humor, your sense of personality, your ideals, and beliefs.