Business Explanation of Social Media Marketing

Many businesses get confused by Social Media Marketing.

If you are new too it is understandable - given the plethora of jargon, sites and even icons/ images.

So let's explain it in terms we can all relate to.

Building your Social Media Marketing infrastructure is like building your own newspaper circulation. So let's use a newspaper as an analogy.

A newspaper builds a readership amongst a certain demographic or demographics. The larger the readership amongst this demographic the more advertisers targeting the same demographic will pay. Hence giving the newspaper its revenue stream.

For businesses looking to Social Media Marketing businesses it is often not about creating an advertising revenue stream but creating a digital asset through which they can build brand awareness or conduct promotions.

Demographic / Audience/ Readership

Demographics can be certain types of people or groups. For business it's your target market.

For example the Wall Street Journal tends to attract a wealthier aspirational person with interests in finance etc. Advertisers targeting this type of person therefore are prepared to pay well for advertising in WSJ to reach this demographic.

For people or businesses in Social Media Marketing the first thing is to define their target demographic.

How To Attract the Demographic/ Audience / Readership/ Target Market

A newspaper does this by providing news articles and information of interest. Such articles are written by journalists.

Social Media is exactly the same except that such articles are usually written by you or your company on your company blog. The articles and information you write need to be appealing to your target market.

So think about the type of information or news your target market is seeking. You can be assured that this is not sales pitch stuff. For example if you're selling legal services, make posts about things of interest in the law.

Building a Target Market Audience

The next step is to promote your content to increase your readership. You can have great content but if no one knows about it well.... you know the answer.

This is where other social media tools come in to play.

Twitter: Twitter audiences tend to like news and information. So create a twitter account and then use services like Twellow and Listorious to find people on Twitter who fit your target market. Assuming they follow back you can then share your blog article with them. If they like it they will share it and so forth. What you get is traffic to your blog - keep them coming back with good articles and you have a readership.

Facebook: Similiar to twitter but use a Facebook business page to promote your content. Also link your blog through network blogs on facebook, that helps as well.

StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg. These are social book marking sites - a bit like a community ratings agency. If they like your article they will rate it and share it. This can be great for traffic too. But beware of self promoting your articles on these sites.

You have a Readership

If you keep up good, regular content to your target audience the word will spread. And with it you will create regular readers - your readership.

But for the moment and to conclude this hub, your company has created a connection to its target market. One through which it can create relationships, enhance word of mouth brand awareness and undertake promotions, market research etc.

Your readership is an incredible asset - the value of which will be discussed in a later hub.

This is a simplified example of the value of Social Media to business. There is far more to Social Media Marketing as most Social Media professionals and Social Media Agencies will tell you.