Social Network Marketing Growth Through Use, Not Just Display Ads

As you know, sometimes in business the most common practices are not the best. A September 2009 study performed by MarketingProfs found that to be true regarding both B2B and B2C uses of social network marketing.

Facebook marketing: The most common tactic used in both B2B and B2C marketing was attempting to drive traffic to corporate materials through status updates and friending customers. Popularity does not equal effectiveness.
The most effective method for consumer-oriented companies was creating a Facebook application. And yet less than one-quarter of respondents attempted this. The second most effective approach did turn out to be friending, followed by creating a survey for customers. And the least effective type of social media marketing? You guessed it: buying ads. People on social networking websites are not interested in advertising being shoved on them; the reason for social networking site success and growth is that they feel so pure and organic, so genuinely safe for friends to connect. Ads detract from that feeling.

Twitter marketing: Twitter has become an interesting tool for marketers to talk to other marketers. Often times, we see marketers flapping their gums, assuming people are listening just dying to spend money with the company who sends the cleverest tweet. Not the case. However, the most effective brand use of Twitter has been to monitor PR problems and negative comments made about the brand. The report also showed that driving sales was the least effective use of Twitter marketing.

Some ways we have seen success social network marketing: User-generated content! User-generated content is so powerful because it is essentially word-of-mouth advertising; the only trick is spurring it. One great way is to excel the sharing of views, comments, etc is to create a topic that is engaging and meaningful to fans of your page or customers with whom you have connected. Another great way is to tie your brand in with a charity. After this genuine tie-in, you can invite people to join, ask them to blog about what the charity means to them, and what they think your company can help with next…help them become more loyal. Write us…we’ve got tons of social network marketing strategies that work!