Social Media
Building a Brand Awareness the Cost-Effective Way
Facebook used to just be a cool place to find your old school friends, but business is turning to the social media supersite, and others, in droves to utilise their power to spread brand awareness. In fact, the number of Australian visitors to social media sites is allegedly surpassing the number of people using search engines.
Did you know:
• There are more than 800millionFacebook accounts users and half these people use the site daily
• People spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
• There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook on their mobile devices and those people are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users
• Australians spend more time on Facebook (average seven hours, 19 minutes per month) than residents of the United States and Italy**
• There are more than 800millionFacebook accounts users and half these people use the site daily
• People spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
• There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook on their mobile devices and those people are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users
• Australians spend more time on Facebook (average seven hours, 19 minutes per month) than residents of the United States and Italy**
The goal of any social media campaign should be to build brand awareness. Should you expect a bucket load of sales through social media? Generally, no. However, social media is the most cost-effective way to promote events, manage your reputation, care for your customers, hold competitions and create awareness. Don’t get us wrong, there will be some retailers for which social media can be held directly responsible for sales, but this will definitely not be the case for all.
Although social media sites offer ‘free’ and easy access, business owners need to look at the bigger picture before committing their staff to maintaining a social media presence for the business as it’s not as free as it looks and there can be other pitfalls.
Once you’ve committed to a social media presence, you should commit to engaging with the sites and your likers or followers on a daily basis. Regular posts or tweets and timely responses to other people’s comments form the basis of many successful pages as this is the best way to build meaningful relationships with your followers. But this all takes time. So your ‘free’ marketing channel just started costing you at the pay office.
The addictive nature of social media can also cost business owners in lost time as staff, who are supposedly ‘working’ on social media, find themselves instead chatting to their friends about what's happening this weekend. And if social media is new to your organisation, there are also going to be hours lost in training and finding your way around the finer details. Using all the features available on Facebook, for example, can turn your business page into a slick mini website - if you know how.
Ultimately, business owners have two choices; set up a clear social media strategy for their business, or outsource their social media public relations to an expert.
When considering an inhouse social media policy, business owners should clearly specify who is in charge, what can be said on the business site/s and how many times per day/week you will post. Sharing the administration rights can alleviate the burden on any one person, but the roles and responsibilities must be individually identified.
But if this all seems like too much work, giving an outside PR consultancy admin privileges takes the pressure off having to think up creative posts and spending valuable hours engaging with your clients online. MeMedia has been utilising these marketing channels for our clients for years. The relatively small cost involved in engaging a consultancy will definitely pay dividends if you are planning to get serious about social. But it shouldn’t be a question of ‘if’ – moreso ‘when’.
Once you’ve committed to a social media presence, you should commit to engaging with the sites and your likers or followers on a daily basis. Regular posts or tweets and timely responses to other people’s comments form the basis of many successful pages as this is the best way to build meaningful relationships with your followers. But this all takes time. So your ‘free’ marketing channel just started costing you at the pay office.
The addictive nature of social media can also cost business owners in lost time as staff, who are supposedly ‘working’ on social media, find themselves instead chatting to their friends about what's happening this weekend. And if social media is new to your organisation, there are also going to be hours lost in training and finding your way around the finer details. Using all the features available on Facebook, for example, can turn your business page into a slick mini website - if you know how.
Ultimately, business owners have two choices; set up a clear social media strategy for their business, or outsource their social media public relations to an expert.
When considering an inhouse social media policy, business owners should clearly specify who is in charge, what can be said on the business site/s and how many times per day/week you will post. Sharing the administration rights can alleviate the burden on any one person, but the roles and responsibilities must be individually identified.
But if this all seems like too much work, giving an outside PR consultancy admin privileges takes the pressure off having to think up creative posts and spending valuable hours engaging with your clients online. MeMedia has been utilising these marketing channels for our clients for years. The relatively small cost involved in engaging a consultancy will definitely pay dividends if you are planning to get serious about social. But it shouldn’t be a question of ‘if’ – moreso ‘when’.
This is why you need to call us, today, so we can talk about how we can implement a strategy for you business.
Call me on 0402741740 or 0414900030 and we can have a chat.
Speak soon,
Michael Becker
