Social Media Marketing - Does It Work?

We've come across opinions from both ends of the spectrum on this.

At one end there is the traditional marketer who says "where are the sales?" and "what's the ROI?" and espouses the view that social media is a fad for business and a waste of time.

At the other end there's the evangelist who says you only need social media for marketing and nothing else.

So what is my view? It's somewhere between the two. Social media is a very important part of marketing but works in a different way to traditional marketing. It is about building relationship and is a long game not a quick sale. I do however believe that certain businesses can successfully market through social media only.

How do we do it? Well, we concentrate on Twitter as the primary social media channel for business. We have a company account (@TadWebSolutions), which tends to be a little more straight and business oriented, and our own staff company accounts (@IanE1111 me, @tees_web Peter) which are a bit more business and personal views mixed in together. The personal side is encouraged, after all we are people working in a business. We also run #ClevelandHour from 10-11 a.m. on Twitter via the @ClevelandHour account with the aim of promoting local business which does include our competitors.

We also use LinkedIn, Facebook (www.facebook.com/TadWebSolutions), Google+ (which seems to have changed our location to Johannesburg?????), Pinterest and of course Blogger.

What is the best approach for a business? The answer is it depends upon your business. There are guidelines to follow but the exact approach to take depends on what you do and what you would like to achieve. We can help you with that if you need some advice and support in developing a social media strategy.

Do we get business from our social media channels? Yes. Direct requests from new connections are rare but do occasionally happen but that is not the point. Referrals from businesses we have built up relationships with via social media are much more common as is work directly from businesses we have built a relationship with (as is passing work their way as well). That doesn't mean follow someone on Twitter and get a big contract. It means build relationships with people, sometimes offline as they grow, and opportunities arise to help each other, pass work to each other and collaborate on projects.

If you're looking for a little more detail and some guidelines on using Twitter in particular then take a look at the blog of our friends at i2i Business Solutions - sound advice.

So if you're not yet using social media for your business then give it a go and if you need some help then give us a call.