Social Media: Is it worth YOUR effort?

Oh, social media! When it comes to online marketing, nary a day goes by when it isn’t part of my conversations with clients and internet professionals. Here’s an interesting scenario for you to ponder: You’re spending 10 hours per week curating, posting, managing, planning and engaging your community members. From your social metrics tools such as Adobe Social or Google Analytics, you see that there are people from your social media community signing up for your newsletters, asking questions via your website’s contact page, and some are even buying your products from your e-commerce store. Your social media strategy looks like it’s working, but are all your social media efforts contributing enough to your business’ bottom line to justify the time commitment? Perhaps these reasons should give you an added inspiration for staying on top of your social media game: Social media signals are a part of Google’s myriad ranking factors; Having a social media element in your traffic acquisition strategy makes your website’s traffic and inbound marketing efforts more defensible; Social media provides a captive audience, making your content syndication and customer acquisition efforts easier; In addition to customer acquisition, social media also provides an alternative way for you to answer potential customers’ questions, clarify misconceptions or dispel misinformation, and thank customers for their reviews. The first point is reason enough to keep engaging and accumulating social media followers and fans. Assuming all things are equal, your efforts in social media can equate to better rankings for your target keywords in the long run especially if you put your efforts in engagement and social shares. The second point is obviously also important. If, for whatever reason, your rankings drop for your top performing keywords, it’s good to know that you still have some sort of a traffic fall-back system through your inbound marketing efforts which, ideally speaking, includes your social media strategy. The third is where you entice new and repeat-customer business. Sales events, new product introductions, and showing your expertise in your industry are part of what makes point number 3 important. Online reputation monitoring is perhaps the highlight of the fourth point. The better you are at listening to what people are saying about your brand and your products online, the more chances for engagement you’ll get. And as with everything social media, engagement and shares are what you should be after. Of course, there are other considerations that you should be aware of, such as your social media reach and paid sponsorship options. Our resident social media expert Kassie shared something with me last Friday that should be of interest: Studies show that your content will only be seen by as much as 2% on Facebook and about 5% on Twitter. As more content noise is generated on social media, you’ll eventually see a decline in reach and along with that, engagement and social shares as well. The only way to combat this is to a) produce great content and b) extend your reach via paid post sponsorships, which obviously adds another layer of complexity and requires more time. But fret not. Next week, we’ll talk about content ignition and how to maximize your social media reach in today’s crowded social media environment. Stay tuned!