Social Media Marketing

Thailand social media penetration hits 90%

Social networks are the talk of the town with Australia hitting the second highest social media penetration in Asia Pacific region (89.6%) with Facebook the number one site, according to new figures from comScore.

According to Wikipedia, SMM (Social Media Marketing) is defined as an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

In the context of Online marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. most of the videos on YouTube are published by non-YouTube employees). and, Social Media Marketing refers to the process of promoting your web presence using various social media channels. Some of the key reasons related to Sales & Marketing for which businesses are currently using Social Media Marketing are:

Online Visibility & Branding
Online Reputation Management (ORM)
Online Lead Generation
Online Sales

But, why Social Media Marketing?

Well, if you are not already leveraging the power of SMM, you are most likely to belong to either of the following categories:

You don’t know what Social Media Marketing is
You are not present to the opportunity of Social Media Marketing for your business
You don’t know how to create Social Media Marketing strategy and execute the same

Social Media Optimization Benefits:

Brand Awareness
Lead Generation
Event Promotion
Customer Loyalty
Blogging Platform
Local / Regional / National Focus

Let’s look at some of the real SMM success stories:

Increasing the revenue: Dell made US$ 1 million using Twitter.
Multiplying sales: MASI bicycles doubled sales in two years using blogging and podcasting to reach out.
Building up the relevant community: American Express multiplied its user base 80 times in 11 months using Social Network.
Customer service: How a COMCAST executive contacted a customer who tweeted about a bad experience in 20 minutes sitting in different corners of the globe.

Now, let’s look at some of the questions, which you need to answer before you embark on your journey to realize the full potential of SMM for your business.

What business objectives do you want to fulfil using Social Media Marketing?
Who’s your target audience and on which Social Media channels are they present?
What is your strategy to reach out to them and what is the message you want to communicate to them?
How do you measure and continuously optimize the ROI of your SMM campaigns?