I’ve been talking to a lot of people about social media, and I’ve come to realize that some people have lost sight of the real goal of social media marketing. That is to say, they have completely forgotten about the “marketing” part. Yes, the social part is important, and of course you want to grow your fan base across Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and the like as much as possible, but you can’t forget about the “marketing” part. If you do, you’re wasting your time and losing out on a lot of money.
Let me explain a little bit. When businesses first start marketing on social media they know they need to build a good following. In the beginning, every new follower or fan is a victory. As time goes on and your fan base is established, the goal switches to engagement. People want likes, shares, comments, retweets, and all that good stuff. The problem is that many businesses get stuck at this stage. They find the content that seems to do well, and then they keep posting it over and over again. Engagement is great, wonderful really, but it’s even more important to take a step back and ask if it’s really making money.
It can be a hard question to answer.
The reality is that a lot of businesses don’t like the answer, because for a lot of businesses, the answer is no, all of their social effort isn’t actually making them money.
Now, the common rebuttal is that social media isn’t about direct sales, and that’s true, but it is about building your brand and driving traffic to your website. It’s not enough to simply get 100 likes a day on some silly memes. Those likes are great, but they are silly, like garnering posts need to be followed up (at least occasionally) with blog posts, special offers, and other content geared towards getting people onto your main site, where the money is made. I’ll say it again, the social numbers are great, but ultimately, your business’s bottom line is the number that really matters.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic ratio of silly content to sales content that will both entertain your audience and monetize them effectively. You need to experiment and find the right content ratio for your business and audience. Of course, if you’re not sure where to start, you can contact us here at Wikimotive for a free social evaluation. We’ll gladly take a look at your existing pages and give you a no-obligation review.