With the appearance of social networks, a new, very dynamic and strong channel of communication between the business and its potential customers has been created.
Using the potential of social media as a storage media of the achievements and competitive advantages of the company, step by step, is becoming the goal of an increasing number of companies which, following the example of Western countries, are introducing key elements of optimizing social media and marketing strategies on social networks.
Social media optimization (SMO) and social media marketing (SMM) — are two new terms, that somehow define the marketing use of the social media trends in the promotion of business. Very often these terms are confused or used as synonyms, which is probably due to an initial misunderstanding in the definition of these terms.
For your information, SMO is a concept first introduced by Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice-President of Strategy and Planning at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, in his five rules of optimization websites for social media. This refers to the optimization of the company's resource in terms of increasing its popularity in online communities: social networks, blogs, discussion groups. The increased popularity of the site contributes to both an increase in the number of links leading to the site, which has a positive effect on its position in the issuance of search systems, and the promotion of the brand itself.
At the same time, SMM services for a democratic price – are the process of creation and promotion of content in the community and marketing communication with the online communities.
So, like that, optimization of social networks means getting into the proper use of social media trends to promote your products and services in the form of social media marketing. The optimization of social media refers to processes that take place on the company's website; while social media marketing is already relevant to activities that go beyond that website.
Social media marketing — is a kind of combination of pulling and pushing marketing –on the one hand, all activity comes from our initiative, on the other hand, a real SMM should not require any additional actions from us, except the one that initiated all the action at the very beginning.
The biggest advantage of social media marketing is that anyone can use it, whether it's a corporation with a thousand employees or a small local company that have as an employee just one person.
Using SMM to promote business when prices are optimal is not an easy task.This is partly due to the fact that the main driver of the development of social networks are young people, mainly interested in technical innovation and open source technologies. They are very skeptical of all forms of promotion of commercial and business solutions, as well as how they judge as wrong the approach of the companies to the topic of promoting their services and goods on social media.
A common spam in the form of an addition of a tweet to a social network as: "Company X produces and sells the elegant Y used in Z" or using other methods of mailing is actually doomed to be deleted and suspect any other letter sent by the same person.
Of course, SMM services at reasonable prices are of particular importance. It's a bait for links, that are a form of SMM, and it should start and end with a representation of certain value to other people. Of course, this meaning can be defined in different ways.
Maybe this is:
useful functionality, different from similar on the market, which the company offers to its customers;
viral marketing that introduces elements of fun;
an interesting publication that fits into a specific market niche, etc.
Social media marketing, like any other marketing activity, requires a carefully planned strategy based on the following parameters:
strictly defined expectations from the results of SMM-activities;
correct selection of the target group (profile of the social network user, reader of a specific blog-group, etc.);
a correct and detailed formulated marketing message;
appropriate selection of marketing information channels;
vision of practical use of SMM effects.
A company that wants to promote itself in a community should become part of that community. A short thank-you note to users who appreciated your idea on the social media, the responses to positive and negative comments of the users, the clarification of doubts can help establish real contact with the community, gain trust in its eyes. The SMM is not a so-called "a one-off process ".
When promoting an idea, make sure that is very simple to add a link to the page where it is presented. Facilitating access can take the form of a ready link with such information as: "If you find this information useful to others, send this link to other people or put it on your website." You can't forget the buttons that allow you to add a link from this page to the main social networking sites.
A static, very formal website of the company does not allow you to communicate with social media users. The simplest and easiest to implement channel of such communication can be the blog of the company, which you can not only quite "freely" inform about the company's coming services, but also to establish relations with the blogosphere, to provide results of testing goods and services, etc
Young people who tend to innovations have the largest share on social media. They're constantly looking for something new that they haven't seen before. Before beginning a viral campaign targeting online communities, it makes sense to look at the first pages of the social network site to see if there are things, I can show my business as no one, like a company, ever showed before.
The transfer of values to communities requires long-term connections and trust in the company and its ideas. Each form of SMM promotion at an affordable price carries the risk of alienation of the community and the risk of a lack of measurable effect from certain actions. Even if someone managed to achieve epic success in the SMM campaign, earlier this person probably had many actions that failed. The only way to achieve guaranteed success is perseverance and consistency in its actions.
The message that is intended to be delivered to communities must be reliable and natural. Any methods of building your position “by labels” without providing tangible benefits and measurable benefits to communities will be exposed sooner or later.
It should be expected that in Moldova, following the example of Western countries, SMM will become more popular every year and will reach a huge number of users. Increasing competition on the domestic market, as well as the development of online communities, will create more and more valuable, less invasive forms of marketing messages, which will often prove that a good and thoughtful idea brings better results than thousands of banknotes spent, as it is believed, on an old, well-established model.
We at Studio Webmaster are ready to offer services for the promotion of SMM — while the price will definitely suit every average citizen.
