How social media marketing is changing in 2014
We at SEO Local would, without hesitation, urge you to make social media a fundamental aspect of your online marketing campaign. The growth in popularity of social media websites including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn has led to such websites also becoming increasingly used for marketing, as competition between companies has intensified and so many companies have had to use alternative strategies for increasing their online visibility.
However, what social media marketing techniques we would primarily recommend has changed in 2014. Read further for our explanations of ways in which social media marketing has changed in 2014 and the implications for you.
It can be more difficult to be “heard”above the online “noise”
Many, many companies have already made extensive use of social media marketing. This is bad news for you, largely because it means that companies are now responsible for a ridiculously large amount of chat, posts, status updates, re-tweets and so forth on websites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to try harder to be “heard” above this huge amount of “noise”.
One thing you definitely shouldn’t do is simply post a lot of content on social media websites in the hope that you can just thrive by winning the numbers game. You need to post content that is geared towards providing a pleasant customer experience. In other words, address the genuine needs and desires of potential customers to prevent simply adding even more noise to the existing noise, which wouldn’t really help anyone.
Enable people to engage with people, not a brand
Many people have grown to like regularly using social networking websites because it enables them to engage with individual people with likeable personalities, not just soulless corporate bodies. For this reason, you should allow your company’s potential customers to converse with individuals – in other words, the employees – rather than just a brand.
The employees are likely to be willing to serve as brand advocates or ambassadors, provided that you offer them the opportunity as something that will be genuinely beneficial for them. Employees who serve in these roles will allow potential customers to see the people behind the brand and so lend your company a more – literally as well as spiritually – human face.
