SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The Importance of Twitter , Linked In, Facebook, Email, Blogs & More
Social Media platforms (the venue formerly known as Web 2.0), is any electronic service that allows content to be shared mutually between people, as opposed to just being broadcast out AT people, like a website or commercial, for instance.
- Blogs - the social media that most closely resembles an online magazines that broadcast out information, but also allow users (with permission from the owner) to comment and contribute articles. Articles can be any size. Readers can subscribe via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to have articles or summaries sent to their email or RSS feed aggregator (such as MyYahoo!) Read more...
- Facebook - currently the king of social media in that more than 2.9 billion people are using Facebook. There are currently only 7.7 billion people on the planet so that is over 25% of the Earth. You accumulate "friends" and they can post to your "Wall", add, and/or comment on pictures you posted. Corporate pages called "Company Pages" or "Liked pages." Read more...
- Twitter - micro blogs that broadcast headline-like social media posts limited to 280 characters. Readers "follow" (subscribe) to a Twitter feed and it gets delivered to their Twitter News Page (or mobile phone etc.) Read more...
- Some Twitter 101
- Some Twitter Stats & User data
- Usage
- Linked In - this is the Facebook for business. In this social media, individuals and companies can create profiles and post comments and updates. This is not a place for personal updates like "my dog just had puppies and here are the pictures". Linked In is about business for business people. A great deal of posts on Linked In are about getting a job, promoting your business, or networking your business. Read more...
- Social Media Marketing Plan
Social Media Platforms
Unlike most Social Media strategists, we will not tell you that Social Media is the End All and Be All of online marketing. IF appropriate, it should have a place in your overall marketing and advertising business plan, but it is not appropriate for all business types and can be a huge time waster and detriment if not managed properly. Like every part of your marketing mix, Social Media such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Linked In, should be planned and used as tools to grow your business and make money. While the cost to use these tools is virtually nothing, they can be black holes of wasted time for some. Social Media venues should be used for:
- Updating prospects and clients of changes or news worthy items.
- Entertaining your readers to gain following so that you can direct them to your products and services.
- Educating your followers to build credibility and establish yourself as a subject matter expert.
- Generating traffic to you website or blog .
- Staying informed of the latest news and trends yourself by following your industry's posts.
- Content management tools to easily add new content t your website or blog , which the search engines love.
Facebook for Business
It's true. People spend nearly 12 BILLION hours per month on Facebook. It can be addictive. The trick for businesses is to not just be ON it but to make it profitable and and positive return on the investment of time and money involved. Launched in 2004 from a college dorm room, there is no doubt that Facebook has changed the world and the way we interact with it. With over TWO BILLION users, Facebook has allowed the mainstream an outlet to publish thoughts, photos, comments and be connected to others in a simple and easy manner.- Since Facebook users must be at least 13 years old, 47.1% of the Earth who are old enough to use Facebook already do so
- Estimates are closer to 58.6% of (allowed) Earth population use Facebook, since FB is blocked in China.
- Daily Active Users (DAU): 1.968 billion. EVERY DAY. That's 67% of their Monthly Active Users (MAU)
- Facebook’s Monthly Active Users (MAU) equates to 36.8% of all the people on Earth today.
- 77% of Internet users are active on at least one Facebook (Meta) platform - Out of 4.6 billion global Internet users, 3.59 billion people use at least one of their apps every month: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or WhatsApp. Many use more than one.
- Facebook is the 7th most valuable brand in the world - Apple holds the top spot with an estimated brand value of $263.4 billion USD. Facebook follows huge brands like Amazon, Google, and Walmart to land in 7th place for 2021 with a brand value of $81.5 billion.
- Facebook is the favorite social platform of the 35-44 demographic
- Male internet users, 25-34: 15.9%
- Male internet users, 35-44: 17.7%
- Female internet users, 35-44: 15.7%
- Female internet users, 45-54: 18%
- 69% of Americans use Facebook - that's 227 million people!
- Users spend an average of 19.6 hours a month on Facebook - spending 33 minutes per day on Facebook
- 81.8% of users ONLY use Facebook on a mobile device
- 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month
- Facebook’s potential advertising reach is 2.11 billion people - reaching 63.7% of all Americans over age 13
- Facebook beats out TikTok for short-form video with 60.8% of user share
- Facebook is second to YouTube in live video with 42.6% of user share
Get Engaged: Social Media
I often told my Internet Marketing students to treat their Social Media like going to a cocktail party. If you go to a cocktail party and hand out business cards and say "Buy my services or products! Buy my services or products!" you will notice people shying away from you… in droves. The trick is to be ENGAGING. Interact with others, ask them questions, be humorous, be informative, be interesting. (With engaging Social Media,) you will notice that more and more people gather around you at the party, or at the very least, find you nice to be around.
Slow, But Affordable
Engaged Social Media marketing is slow. Unless you are a celebrity that has a built-in following, or there is some unusual event that attracts an inordinate amount of attention, building followers takes time. But social media usage is free, so the price is right. But social media could take you months, or even years, to build followers. The more followers you build, the more influence you have on those people's buying habits. For example, Kim Kardashian charges $10,000.00 per Tweet because she has so many followers that a Tweet from her reaches 157 million people and some percentage will buy something just because Kim mentioned it. As of this writing, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has the most, over 440 million followers.
Is Social Media REALLY Free?
The accounts are free. Using it is free. But what is your time worth? I know an entrepreneur spending 3 hours per day on social media, 5 nights a week, building a customer platform. If she wants to pay herself $50.00 per hour, that's $750.00 per week she is "spending" on social media (for you non-math majors, that's $3,000.00 per month). Now granted, if she is doing that versus not watching (bad) TV, there really is no cost. But if she could be doing something billable or productive, is her social media really free? Now, what if what she is doing is not getting her followers, or worse, if her social media marketing IS getting her followers, but NOT influencing them to be HER customers?
Twitter is "the little social media ". You are only able to broadcast 280 characters or less in a given "Tweet". It's like publishing a micro-blog. The benefits of Twitter (as with many of the Web 2.0 media) are not really noticeable until you start to establish a sizable list of followers.
Twitter, just like any online tool, can be used to benefit your company, or can be used as huge time waster. Contact Metheney Consulting about setting up your Twitter account and customizing its look and feel or contact Our Marketing Group to discuss how we can plan long term social media campaign that will get results for your business with a minimum of effort and cost.
Some Twitter 101:
While Twitter is simple to use and set-up, how effective it is for business is based on…
- What you Tweet - How informative, funny or interesting your Tweets are
- What you link to - driving traffic to other sites is not always the optimum solution
- The style in which you Tweet - remember everything you do or communicate impacts your brand
- Scheduling of Tweets to coincide with your blog posts and updates
- Integration of Tweets and other social media
- Use of Tweets as content for your website or blog to use Twitter as a content manager, simplifying your life
- Tweets - up to 280 character posts to Twitter
- Tag - your Twitter call sign or login name.
- Following - people you are monitoring their Tweets
- Followers - people that following your Tweets
- # - Mentions - By placing a hash mark in front of a Twitter 's tag, you are "mentioning" them and they will be notified that their name has come up in a Tweet.
- Re-Tweets - republishing someone else's Tweet. If you thought a particular Tweet was funny or informative, you can Re-Tweets it to all the people following your Twitter account. If the person that Tweeted it originally only has a few followers and you have hundreds or thousands, this is a way for their Tweet to reach more. If someone with a huge following finds your Tweet interesting and Re-Tweets it, it can be a great way to quickly build up a following.
- Replies - public replies to a specific Tweet from someone… that everyone can read.
- Direct message - private message to someone
- Tweeps - your Twitter "peeps"
Some Twitter Stats
USERS- 229 million daily active users on Twitter.
- 59.2 percent of all Twitter users worldwide are between 25 and 49.
- Twitter users are roughly 28.8& female and 71.2& male.
- The average session on Twitter is 3.39 minutes.
- There were 11.7 million downloads of Twitter on the App Store in the first quarter of 2019.
- 75% of B2B businesses market their products and/or services on Twitter.
- 500 million tweets are sent out per day.
- 20% of all US internet users access Twitter at least once per month.
- 40% of Twitter users carried out a purchase after seeing it on Twitter.
LinkedIn to Business
LinkedIn (http://LinkedIn.com) is an online web service that allows individuals and businesses to network. It's very much like a business-oriented Facebook. It is more utilitarian, no-nonsense than Facebook, you won't find kids there talking about their dog or who's dating who. LinkedIn is for people or companies that provide business to business services or products, much more so than B2C.
How We Can Help You with LinkedIn
Metheney Consulting and Our Marketing Group can help you manage your LinkedIn account to your greatest advantage by managing a content and marketing schedule of posts, coordinating posts with other media, blogs, site updates, offerings and fitting it into your overall marketing plan. We can also help you minimize your time usage, but like many social networks, the more time you spend forging connections, participating in groups and being active, the more benefit your will receive from it.
About LinkedIn
LinkedIn focuses on business profiles (very much like resumes) and brief Twitter-like status updates. As with any social media , the more followers (LinkedIn calls them "connections") you acquire, the greater your network. Much like the game "Six Degrees of Separation", your connections come in four flavors:
- 1st - people you are directly connected with (example: you have 100 connections)
- 2nd - people connected to your connections (i.e. Each of your 100 connections has 100 connection, so you have 10,000 secondary connections you could make direct or primary connections)
- 3rd - people who are connected to your secondary connections (i.e. each of those has 100 connections x your 10,000 secondary connections = 1,000,000 connections you could connect to)
- No Connection - LinkedIn doesn't talk about these much, but there are people that none of your connections are connected to, so these are people you have no path to you unless they stumble across your profile in a search.
LinkedIn Key Demographics
Predominantly Caucasian college graduates, LinkedIn is 57%-43%, male to female, 68% over 35 years old making more than $60,000 per year, 76% of which have no kids under 17.What is LinkedIn Good For
- Post your profile to provide accurate information about you should someone search for you on the web
- Post and look for job listings
- Build your credibility - Get recommendations from other professionals
- Post your status - to keep business people informed on what you are doing
- Establish yourself as a subject matter expert - Post informational or educational nuggets
- Connect to like minded professionals - join LinkedIn Groups
- Expand your network of connections
- Manage the information that's publicly available about you as professional
- Find and be introduced to potential clients, service providers, and subject experts who come recommended
- Create and collaborate on projects, gather data, share files and solve problems
- Be found for business opportunities and find potential partners
- Gain new insights from discussions with like minded professionals in private group settings
- Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
- Post and distribute job listings to find the best talent for your company
With 75% Caucasian and nearly 50-50% in male to female, Facebook demographics indicate 74% over 18 (32% over 35 years of age), and 63% earning more than $60,000 in income with 53% of the members college graduates. Contact us to day to see how we can integrate Facebook as part of your social media and marketing strategy.
Time for a Social Media Professional
This is where hiring a social media expert comes in to play. Yes, they will cost you money, but maybe not in comparison to what you are spending in the example above. And very likely, they will get better results than you would. But don't just hire someone who declares them self a social media professional.
- How long have they been doing social media marketing? (if they say longer than 2009, it's probably BS.)
- Is their experience comprised of posting on Facebook?
- What successes have they had in the past?
- How long have they been in business?
- Can they calculate your probable ROI of your social media marketing campaign?
- Do they understand other aspects of marketing? Blog posts coordinated with Email campaigns, scheduled with social media posts; traditional marketing, direct mail marketing, etc.)
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