Mae C. - "Social Media Marketing Assistant - Freelance Project Manager, Philippines"

Here is my little alphabet about social media: S – share Here lies the power of social media – the ability to share. Customers tend to share a lot of information on the net – links, videos, images. If you have these multimedia available about you and your products, you are making it easy to market and have your presence available. O – open Search is power. Google is power. Having your business out in the open with SM gives you an opportunity that others missed. You...

Here is my little alphabet about social media:

S – share
Here lies the power of social media – the ability to share. Customers tend to share a lot of information on the net – links, videos, images. If you have these multimedia available about you and your products, you are making it easy to market and have your presence available.

O – open
Search is power. Google is power. Having your business out in the open with SM gives you an opportunity that others missed. You may a few hundreds of people reached through your email marketing campaign, but think of the millions you can reach through the net.

C – content
Customers don’t want to hear news about just you and your products anymore. They want to hear what you think about the industry you are in – the value you bring into their lives. Maybe toot your own horn sometimes but overall you must be a content provider, the go-to persona, of your industry in this medium.

I – interact
Gone are the days of push marketing. Customers are smarter nowadays. They use these channels to be able to immediately interact with you. Email server down? Phone out of reach? Try to tweet!

A – aggregate
Keeping a close eye on your competitor? Try aggregating and clue in on their latest gimmicks, news, promos and maybe it will give you a hint on what to do next with your own business.

L – loyalty
As a social media user myself across networks and sites, the thought of businesses listening to what I have to say is overwhelming. My ranting about GoDaddy lead to a GoDaddy CS to help me out with my concern. Weeks later I found myself purchasing domains over again. Moral? Customer loyalty rakes in trust and believe me, it rakes in dollars too.

M – mix
Mix photos, videos, text, audio. Facebook lets you do this easily and the more you share, the more customers know you and makes you 3D. Whether is be as a topic starter or getting a point across, the ability to mix these is something that you cannot do on an FHM magazine.

E – engage
To be authentic gains you more listeners than a bot, of course. SM users are smart people. They can immediately detect fake accounts and know when interactions are not authentic. Just like walking into a party with a fake smile, they know when your engagement with them in this medium is real or driven by lust for cash.

D – distribute
You have an interesting thought to share. You mass update your favorite social sites. Are these the right ones for you? SM is not a one-size-fits-all thing. It has to be customized and researched. What networks work for this business may not be the same as what works for yours. Distribute your social media content in the right networks to the right niche.

I – integrate
Integrate social media into your website, your email campaign and you will see the returns far greater. In a rush to convert leads to customers, most marketers focus on what currently works. If it’s not broken, why fix it? Again, it is lost opportunity.

A – accelerate
Start your social media campaigns and accelerate returns. Coupled with SEO and SEM, adding a dash of social media can never be a wrong move. What you will be doing is increasing the range of your reach to potential customers in your niche and hey, it is better than actually cold-calling or sending unsolicited email or messages. The opposite of what SM does.

Know your customers and make them feel relevant. In return, expect loyalty and mention and close a sale or two. I am learning social media too but overwhelmed does not mean uninformed. ;)

The internet is a powerful tool for anyone eager to learn. How about cashing in on your prospects eagerness to learn about you?

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