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Social Media and Inbound Marketing

Posted by Andy Evanko

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July 11, 2014

Over the years, Social Media channels have been such a driving force in the digital marketing space.  The power of connecting on a personal level with potential and returning customers is a definitive root in the inbound marketing strategy and, this is exactly what social media can do for your business.  Inbound Marketing is all about personally knowing who your customers are and informing them with engaging content.  Social media outlets have the power to do this instantaneously with your existing following.  The goal is to have your social media following promote your services and connect you to their spider web of friends, connections and followers. This can forever grow your network of potential customers and constantly drive the reach of your business to others. Social media outlets create “word of mouth” marketing over the digital space.

We can think of social media as networking online. Whether you are in the business to consumer space or the business to business space there is

 a form of social media that can benefit your business. In all reality, all social media can and will benefit your business. The more social media sharing you push your content out of the more opportunity there is to connect with potential customers.  Publishing content over social media outlets will also greatly increase your SEO.  The more places your potential customers can see your content, the better. Every business needs to be active on social media but how do you make it effective?

Social media is a blessing and nightmare for most businesses.  It can be a blessing when you can develop strategies to connect with clients and prospects to foster engagement and communication.  It can be a nightmare because not all people see the value and return on investment, and you can feel like you are left out of the game by not participating.

Social media’s biggest contribution to inbound marketing is its ability to easily share rich, relevant content (read that again: rich, relevant content) with the people who want to read it.  So, step one is to create the content your consumers want to see. Step two is to share that content on social media. But, remember that you shouldn’t just post a link to your content anywhere – you need to use the appropriate social media channel for your business.

The social media channels most frequently employed with inbound marketing is Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.  Other social channels, are also employed, but tend to be vertical market specific.  For example, if you sell retail merchandise to consumers, Pinterest is a good place.  If you are a contractor, plumber, electrician, etc., then Angie’s List is a must.  If you sell only to other businesses, LinkedIn is the most important social channel to engage with prospects and your active referral network of colleagues.  If you are trying to become a thought leader, with lots of followers, then Twitter is the place you have to be.

Social media also helps your search engine ranking to make your website more visible, by creating engagement (comments, sharing) around your content.  For some vertical markets (e.g., retail, restaurants, etc.), it can also leverage the way people shop for your service or product online through Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc., where recommendations do matter.

The small business marketer should view social media marketing in two ways:

  1. Tools for researching and finding content on your targeted keywords to develop rich content strategies.
  2. The mechanics of posting content on a regular basis to your social channels LinkedIn, Facebook, and You Tube accounts and employing Twitter as a broadcast medium to make followers aware of you postings.

The social media channel you emphasize in your marketing strategy depends on the type of business:

  • Business-to-Business companies should have LinkedIn as a core element of their social media marketing mix.
  •   Twitter is emerging as an important resource for consumers and therefore an important channel for all companies to nurture and pay attention to, though currently a stronger tool for B to B markets.
  • If your business is retail and serves mostly women, then Pinterest is a good place to be

 

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With its power to connect people and business together, social media should now be a part of every businesses marketing budget or general practice.   If you’re not willing to advertise on social media outlets, it is a smart decision to budget out a small amount of your time to interact with your followers over your social media accounts. Know your customer and buyer personas and use the knowledge to share, create and post as much content as possible. Every time additional content is published through social media, there exists an opportunity for more eyes to fall on your business and your brand. Think about how many of your customers are using social media on a daily basis.  Don’t you want to be in front of them? Sure you do. Social media is such an essential tool in today’s digital marketing space.  These outlets have the capabilities to make a personal connection between your business and existing customer. Social media embodies everything that is inbound marketing. If you can understand the why social media can create business for you then, you should be able to understand how all the inbound marketing systems work together to get you more business.

 

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