While talking to any real online marketer, they will surely tell you how immensely important and powerful social media marketing is. Talk to a business owner from any older era and they are most likely going to let you know how useless it is.
With obvious reasons, the first group mentioned has way more incentive to tell you how awesome it has been for them and the latter group not because of how much technology keeps changing, but do you think the real truth might be hidden somewhere in the middle? it kind of does!
With pinpoint execution and great planning, marketing with social media will most likely be very successful for any type of business. After reading this survey of how 357 marketers that i recently conducted, any type of social media marketing had (by far) the biggest percentage or respondents (a whopping 96%) who have claimed they actually planned to keep or increase their social media budgets exactly the same over the next year or so. Out of 10 different strategies surveyed, social media marketing had the 3rd highest ROI (average).
Knowing all of this there are still a lot of ugly dark secrets that social media commercialism has that no real marketer, including me would ever admit to knowing.
1.Social media marketing is never really free
One of the best advantages of any social media marketing that a lot of marketers like to tell others is that it’s totally free. Well, it kind of is, it will not cost you a nickel to actually claim your business online, all of your social media profiles you could dream of, post to them whenever you feel like it. the only problem is, even know this is free you still have to spend lots of time doing it. To be successful you have to spend tones of time posting to all of your accounts and groups your a part of. At least on a regular basis.
It can take hours upon hours to build great social profiles, maintaining them and being active on them for hours a week to maintain your presence. Time is money right? Start adding up the hours and then think about it for a while.
2. There is no real way to predict patters of your success
No matter how confident others may be when they tell you they have the ultimate secret to success for your business, your social media power and success, to this day there isn’t a verifiable way to actually guarantee your success. This is a guarantee (unless you copy a business 100%) every business is unique, they have different demographics they are forgetting, different history, mind set, and their competitive landscape is totally different. With that said, there is no singled out strategy out there that could possibly be used for everyone. Also, keep in mind social media is always evolving for better and worse with different variables and results, so the predictability for a perfect social media campaign is always floating away from you when you seem to get it right.
3. You need a crazy following before your social media marketing will pay off
Bottom line for your social media marketing efforts, like any type or strategy is, ROI, or your return on your investment. Like most success stories, you may have good results by getting more followers and engagement when you execute your campaigns but your ROI will be horrible. This is normal.
So imagine you take 30 minutes to create a good post, and you get it out there to your 25 followers. Imagine now that you have the same post, but you have 25,000 followers (and lets also assume those followers are actually interested in your product or brand). This is a no brainer, but which one do you think will have the highest return on investment? It takes a really long time for any social media to actually pay off.
4. Social media platforms can restrict your reach
Any social media company out there has a huge interest in getting their subscribers and members to pay for their advertising campaigns. As a perfect result to this you mat notice they like to restrict you for the amount of reach you area able to attain with organic traffic (unpaid). Just because you have 5000 followers doesn’t mean your awesome post that took you 3 weeks to write is going to reach all 5000 of them. Keep this in mind when you are considering the power of social media. It’s actually far less then i’m even telling you.
5. Data will never tell you everything
One of the best aspects and advantages of social media is it has a crazy amount of data you can learn from. You can learn user behavior, demographics, interaction patterns, etc. Awesome, but all of this data combined will not tell you everything. This data doesn’t give you insights about how users feel abut your brand or services or about detailed interactions (not yet). This data is also unable to give you new ideas that you haven’t yet thought about. Unless your asking your users the right questions it can’t give you true actionable insights.
6. Adapting to change is crazy important but seriously exhausting
With everything else technology related, social media changes faster than the seasons. New platforms popping up, trends coming and going faster that you can keep up with. If you really want to be successful, you really have to try to keep up (very hard to do if you are running solo). Trying to keep up with social media trends, even for the most seasoned bloggers and social media marketers can be really exhausting, no matter now passionate you are.
It will be more comforting for you to get a routine and settle into it, but unfortunately for social media you don’t get an opportunity to do that. You may get comfortable doing what your doing for a while, but believe me, if your doing it right it never last long.
7. Your going to kick yourself in the ass a little more that you expected
When your in the social media world you end up with a ton of regret, especially when you are on a lower level. You tend to make a lot or mistakes, typos, and seem to post at all the wrong times. This isn’t really crucial ( at least your writing relevant posts). My point here is you kick yourself in the ass for what you didn’t do. You will most definitely miss a perfect opportunity for a good post, hashtag, or a great engagement. You will always see a competitor post and think to yourself (why the hell didn’t i think of that before them). At any rate, your strategy these days will never be perfect and you need to realize and aware that this is a fact.
Conclusion
Despite any disgusting truths and rarely mentioned truths you read today about social media marketing in it’s true nature. This will remain as some your most cost effective and approachable
internet marketing strategies you should adopt. Whatever stage your company or online business is currently in, or what your target market, short and long term goals are, social media marketing will most certainly help you in your success, as long as you keep in mind that is does have is advantages and limitations.
chris kinney
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