You may be aware that social media has become a very popular new way for businesses to approach internet marketing. Why is this the case exactly? Understanding the underlying reasons why social media helps businesses to succeed is a good first step in implementing these types of marketing strategies.
Follows Social Selling Principles
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are useful to businesses because they can be made to work well with the general principles of a new marketing philosophy called social selling. Social selling emphasizes creating a friendly relationship with potential clients rather than seeing them as sales prospects to be pressured, cajoled, and convinced. While the underlying motivation in these cases is still to sell the individual something, the emphasis is placed on interaction, fun activities, and a personable dialogue between the seller and the potential customer.
It isn’t very hard to see how social media works with these types of principles. The sites like those mentioned above all encourage sociability and communication. Thus, if a business simple creates a social media page, they are immediately seen in this sort of light. Other users will see the business as another potential friend on the site rather than as something commercial that is advertising to them from outside of an online social context. Businesses are composed of people, and thus everyone using the internet can be seen in a friendly light. Businesses both large and small have become aware of this fact and are putting it to good use. This tends to be a win win sort of scenario because customers are still free to choose whoever they would like to do business with and companies that use social media find a base of customers that see the businesses as basically friendly and likable and are thus happy to buy from them.
Interactive
Interactivity is a big part of the psychology behind social media sites. These sites give multiple means of contacting and sharing content with other users. Businesses find this very useful because it allows them to cultivate just the kind of fun and interactive online relationship mentioned above. Clients will see the business as something to interact on more than just a commercial level. For instance, they can leave comments and on the social media page of a particular business, send private messages to it, get responses from the business, invite friends to visit and the page and add the business as a friend, and so on. This all has the met effect of making the business seem much more accessible and enjoyable to interact with than it might otherwise seem.
Informative
Social media also helps sites to be informative. It customers become more informed about businesses and businesses to become more informed about customers. Companies can put information such as company history, news, interesting industry based facts, and instructions regarding special offers and contests on their page. As customers become more informed about what a business has to offer they are often more apt to choose to do business with them. Companies can also get more information about their clientele on many social media sites. For instance, they can search out users by various types of criteria, use site based analytics tools to see who is visiting their pages most often, and even read the posts of particular clients to learn in a specific way what their interests are.
The general idea here is that social media sites work for businesses on a number of levels that take their marketing beyond the commercial and into the realm of fun and social internet interaction. This is very helpful for both businesses and consumers because it makes the general commercial atmosphere enjoyable and interesting. Whether you’re a large or small business it pays to get involved in this new trend and see how it can help your business to thrive.
Darci Moni has been in area of accounting principals finance staffing agency, for a decade. He knows how accounting works and has helped a lot of clients. He can be found on twitter giving accounting tips and tricks or on facebook popular accounting groups.
