What are the various avenues of Social Media?

Now that we have got an idea of social media, let us move on to social media networks. As social media is a broad term, it extends a wide array of websites. But the one and most common similarity between these websites is that it enables you to interact with other visitors.

A large portion of referral traffic is now being generated from the top social media avenues such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest.

As a newcomer to the social media realm, the invite-only Pinterest network now holds over 100 million users (that’s more than LinkedIn) therefore opening new possibilities for marketers thru the means of interest-based marketing. Leveraging the potential of each of these social giants can be rather overwhelming. As mentioned above, seamless integration of social-sharing capabilities with your content are critical to providing proper online exposure of your brand.

Using Facebook for Social Media Marketing

The usage of Facebook in social media marketing efforts has become an imperative elementto any internet marketing initiative. Quite frankly it’s an inevitable option that all businesses should be utilizing. With over 1 Billion plus strong users it’s without a social platform that should be leverage and explored for business potential. Facebook connects consumers with brands they love. A great opportunity for any business owner to utilize the interactions that take place on daily basis by exposing their brand. Fan pages and Facebook Advertising offer businesses and marketers equally the opportunity to spread awareness about a brand.

Integration of Facebook into your website is fairly simple. The various Facebook Social Plugins offer diversity and flexibility for a seamless implementation into your site. Check them out to see which one fits best for your aesthetic. If you have a business fan page, don’t worry, there’s plenty of plugins too that can appeal to your liking. Consider integrating this feature on your website, individual blog posts and any static pages that you may have on your website.

Using Twitter for Lead Generation & Referral Traffic

Twitter can be a bit tedious to understand especially for newcomers in the social space. After being on Twitter myself for nearly 3 years now I have to admit that at first it was quite confusing to understand. If you’ve never engaged in micro-blogging activities before you may struggle with understanding the means behind Twitter. Brand like JetBlue, Comcast and H&R block just to name a few have found the social platform to be of a huge opportunity for lead generation. For additional referral traffic opps to your website considering integration of Twitter sharing capabilities on your website. Your content is valuable and should be exposed with your community for additional interactions and conversation starting.

YouTube – Video Marketing Potential to Leverage

The days of traditional TV advertisements, how-tos and tutorials have migrated onto the ever-popular YouTube platform. With excess of over 6 billion video views per day it’s without a doubt one of the most critical platforms out there that you should engage in. Compare this to the entire population of Earth which roughly sits at 7.165 billion people. Video marketing isn’t for everyone though and actually quite challenging to some extent. However if you’re a retailor that offers a product or service there’s plenty of untapped potential for you to squeeze out of this social video giant. Integration of videos into your website is as simple as embedding a piece of code within a desired location that gives the user the ability to share. At this point in time YouTube offers flexibly options for a seamless website integration of your videos.

Pinterest – Interested Based Marketing Techniques & Opportunities

Pinterest gives marketers the ability to connect with consumers on a whole another level. Never before has there been a network that’s strictly visually driven. Even more so this particular network is invite-only and primarily driven by the female gender. For anyone’s that’s been in business for some time will already know that most business around the World is driven by the female gender. Therefore here’s huge opportunity for untapped potential that you can benefit from on your website. Pinterest involves sharing of photos within your community with features such as Pinning, Repinning and Commenting. Dependent upon the industry you’re in this may be applicable for you therefore consider the addition of Pinterest to your social media sharing capabilities on the website itself.

There are plenty of referral traffic opportunities that you can squeeze out of these networks.

Is online marketing a career dream?

An effective and prompt marketing campaign online as compared to mailers, radio or TV advertising can be fulfilling and extremely rewarding.

Disadvantages of social media marketing

1. Time consuming – Social media marketing need constant feeding of your pages and profiles with comments and links to keep people interested. This work may often be cumbersome and thus pose a hindrance.
2. Late in realizing ROI – Social media is a long haul strategy. It could be months, or even years, before you start seeing it translating into increased customer loyalty and sales
3. Risk of negative comments – social media, if not used in the right frame and with the right rules of the game, can often be clumsy and nonsensical to the extent of impacting your company/brand value/reputation.

Advantages of social media marketing

1. Relationship building – this helps with building one-to-one dialogue with your client so that you can have a powerful social media.
2. Customer Forum – Social media sites are not merely a domain full of teenagers. It now draws all demographics and ages.
3. Fast Publicity– Social media spreads your platters and messages to people very quickly. And the best part is your customers helps you by spreading them for you
4. Create brand personality – Posting messages always can develop public perception of your product image very quickly.
5. Review gain – Questions can be asked and polls campaigns to gain valuable review on how you can modify or change your products and services
6. Reduced Entry Cost – Developing profiles and pages on Facebook and other social media networking sites are quick, easy. Often its free.
7. Crisis marketing – When something goes wrong, you come to know about it and there are options where you can handle the situations more effectively.

What are the problems faced by executives at the lower end of hierarchy?

The major problems executives face at the lower end of the protocol is that often they are unaware of the effects of the social media marketing and as a result they remain in dark as to what exactly is the result of their hard work. Moreover since it’s completely online therefore most of the time people who actually are working hard get unnoticed.

What are the problems while handling clients?

Most of the time the client interaction is very prompt but often due to cut-throat competition its hard to convince your client about your quality and product.

How to handle payment problems?

When facing problems regarding payment from clients various options are there and most of the time there are template process and protocol which the client needs to follow or else it’s a loss for both.