What Is the Purpose of Social Media & How Aliro Marketing Can Help You
Who is Aliro Marketing? Aliro Marketing assists local businesses to increase brand awareness through social media, email marketing, blogs, and other marketing techniques that will ultimately increase sales and traffic to their businesses and websites.
I manage the social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ & Instagram for business owners who understand the value of social media but simply do not have the time to properly manage the profiles themselves. I allow owners to “Find Their Freedom Again” by managing the profiles so they can do what they do best & run their company.
What is Social Media’s Purpose? If you’re asking what Social Media can do for you, you’re asking the wrong question. According to Simply Social: (http://www.gosimplysocial.com/blog/why-its-important-for-your-business-to-be-social/)
“The road to social media success begins with understanding the purpose of social media and asking the right questions:
“How do we use social sites to engage with our customers?”
“How do we communicate our story effectively?”
The answers to these essential questions give your company a purpose for engaging online in the first place.
- Use Social Media sites to build your brand’s awareness and show your company’s identity through real human communications. Also provides an open forum to collaborate & share ideas, experiences, & interests.
- Social Media is a more efficient tool for prompt customer service. Before conducting business with a company, most consumers want more information. Social media has become a popular research tool. 82% of consumers use social media to speak with businesses directly (Social Media Day Conference 2014, Mari Smith, Facebook Expert). Engaging with consumers in this setting develops a relationship, provides an opportunity to answers questions, and ensures that potential leads have a positive experience with your company.
- Building a community to grow your bottom line: Recruit Customers by engaging in communication. By publishing content that’s relevant to your business, interested leads will interact with your content by commenting or contacting you directly. Responding to their comments online allows you to embrace interested leads and turn them into loyal followers. By “liking” your page on Facebook for example, leads will see future content that you publish over time. These “likes” are also referred to as followers, subscribers, or fans. Getting enough of them will build a community of people that wants to engage and do business with you. Soon, you may even have existing customers advocating on behalf of your business and working to recruit more business on your behalf!
- Manage Your Online Perception. People are already on these social media sites talking about your business and industry, so you need to be a part of the conversation to be able to get the potential customers to perceive your brand the way you want them to see your brand. One way to help manage the online perception is to use customers who already love you to create the perception through recommendations, endorsements, & simply telling others about your brand (Social Media Day Conference 2014, Ron Nash, LinkedIn Expert). If you’re not on the social media sites, you’re not giving your potential customers an opportunity to tell others about your expertise & authority in your industry (Social Media Day Conference 2014, Marvin Shervington, Google+ Expert).
Statistics: According to Social Media Today, there are 6.8 billion people on the planet; 4 billion use a mobile phone; only 3.5 billion use a toothbrush!! 81% of smartphone users have performed research via smartphone. 48% then use phones to visit the businesses social media pages. 80 percent of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook. (References to these stats can be provided from my general presentation)
According to Statistic Brain, there are over 1.1 Billion active Facebook users and they follow and are connected to on average 80 business pages. 48% of 18-34 year olds check Facebook when they get up and 28% check Facebook before they get out of bed! http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/
Descriptions of Social Media Platforms:
Facebook is more casual, fun, behind-the-scenes, relationship building.
Twitter is quick sound bites, short opinions, and quick up to the minute information sharing.
Instagram is all about pictures–it’s people wanting to look through your photo albums & hope you’ll do the same with theirs….just plain ‘ole curiosity of what people are up to–what’s important to them; it’s a great way to know your customer’s needs.
LinkedIn is about networking–making more connections.
Google+ is more technical, more informational, news-worthy…but with pictures. Pictures still out perform over all other posts. Google+ is Google – necessary for better search results.
Pinterest is a collection of things people enjoy — it’s a great platform to get to know your customers & be able to market to them better, and vice-versa.
Guidelines When Connecting: If I know them great, accept connection; If not, I take a look at their profile:
1) Do I like their posts? Is it something that I wouldn’t mind sharing?
2) Do they have a decent amount of posts? People with very few posts, whether it’s on google+, twitter, etc. aren’t there to connect & share, and so I won’t connect with them. But on the flip side, do they have too many posts? Do they spam people?
3) Same goes with friends/followers/connections–how many do they have? If it’s just a few, are they just starting out–is this a new account? If so, maybe I’ll connect with them. If not, again, something is up. And if it’s not a national company/person, I’m suspicious of the amount of followers — did they buy them? Just seems dishonest to me when a company purchases followers, and those followers do not do one single thing in return for the business, so why have them?
If everything seems legit & I like the posts, I’ll follow them even if I don’t know them, because that’s what social media is for 🙂
Expectations & Closing Thoughts: Social Media Marketing is much more than just posting pictures. Anyone can do that. What I bring to the table is experience in reading & understanding analytical data to know when to post & what to post on a consistent daily basis; finding content to post when otherwise there isn’t anything to post; being able to quickly respond to customer service needs (customer expects a response within 1-2 hours); knowing how to grow fan bases organically & through advertising; monitor all accounts multiple times per day; fill out profile pages completely to give your audience the best picture of your organization; can provide advertising through the social media sites; and am flexible to adapt to whatever your specific needs are and handle those tasks.
I take pride in the work I do and do not operate with unethical behaviors to grow fan bases. I do not purchase page likes; pages grow organically or through normal paid online advertising. Because of this, it can take a while for a page to see active growth. Trust that we’re planting quality seeds that will one day grow into a beautiful supportive community. Martin Shervington (Google+ Expert): “It’s about relationships, and relationships take time to build and grow. It often takes about 20 interactions between your brand & the customer before the customer feels they can reach out to you for anything and become your brand ambassador.” That is the purpose of social media—focus on being social, and the business will come.
If we provide helpful information for your target audience and tell your organization’s story through pictures & videos, people will want to support you; your organization is doing great things! Your audience is already on social media sites for their own personal uses…might as well capture their interest & be a part of the conversation that sparks actions that will lead to real conversions. Let me help you Find Your Freedom Again!
