Social Media Marketing (SMM) is more than just a buzzword or a phenomenon. Social Media Marketing is the marketing of the future; where companies, businesses or individuals take advantage of available Internet and communication technologies and use them as tools to deliver customer-focused messages that encourage engagement and outreach, ultimately achieving marketing and brand communication objectives.
MarketingSherpa has published research revealing that more companies are shifting much of their marketing efforts from traditional media to social media. Because? These businesses are seeing higher ROI from social media efforts, and traditional media isn’t as effective as it used to be.
This growing interest in SMM has also created opportunities for a position that didn’t exist a short time ago, Social Media Manager.
Everyone is going social; these are not just fortune 500 companies, but any company or person that has a product or service to offer, such as dentists, mechanics, painters, wedding planners… people who are in dire need but don’t know how to run a campaign in the social networks, and you probably don’t have time to spend on Facebook or Twitter looking for new clients.
Forrester has released statistics showing that 99% of retailers plan to build an online presence specifically on Facebook by 2011. Now, herein lies the demand for these types of sellers… people who are already SMM experts and will deliver the results. faster. than a business owner putting themselves on an SMM learning curve.
But what do social media managers do? In addition to creating and implementing your social media strategy, they are your brand’s executive assistants, performing tasks like:
1. Clean up your Twitter communications and eliminate spam messages, leaving those messages that are important to you… or as in the case of customer relations/support, routing them to the appropriate person or department in a company.
2. Blogging and all blog-related tasks and functions related to maintaining a blog, such as comment approval and cleanup; and in some cases for managers with knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO), blog optimization and content development.
They also help ensure your blog posts/content gets the most traction by posting it to other sites at different times of the week, or exposing it to your Twitter followers at different times of the day so more people pick up on it.
3. On social media, grow your network or followers. On Facebook they can be your profile friends or fans in the case of fan pages, and on Twitter they are your followers.
It’s all about numbers, the more people in your network, the more people see or read your messages. Social media managers will find people who are their target audience, follow or connect with them, and then facilitate engagement to develop relationships.
The three keys to success are network growth, content sharing, and engaging your audience.
These tasks can take anywhere from half an hour to 1 or 2 in a day, so hiring a regular employee might not be cost effective. Doing this yourself or training someone within the company to do it may not produce immediate or ideal results for a variety of reasons. That’s why it would be better to just hire an expert to do it for you, get results faster and focus on more important aspects of your business.
Who says that nobody can make money with social networks? Companies and businesses are, as are the people who do the social media work for them, of course, the latter probably having more fun… making a good living getting paid to play games on Twitter and Facebook all day long! day!
