Its 10:57 a.m. CST on a cloudy Monday morning. I check my email and somebody has kindly decided to follow me. As I normally do, I click to view their profile to see if I think following them will bring value. Lo and behold, Twitter has crashed due to too many tweets. Granted, the crash only lasted a few minutes, but think about what that means.
Too Many Tweets?
According to RJMetrics, Twitter has about 75 million accounts all together. About 20% of those accounts are active. Now, while 20% doesnt sound like much, it equals out to around 15 million active Tweeters (Read the Twitter report). If each Tweeter actually owns 3 of the active accounts (as some do), that still leaves 5 million individuals on Twitter. Quite a bit of social reach for any business or individual #justsayin
This brings us to the whole topic of this blog, social media marketing.
There are tons of social media networks and methods, which ones should you use?
The three most prominent methods are Twitter, Facebook and blogging - both personal and professional versions. Each reaches out to millions of people, engaging, inviting and all-around connecting with individuals around the world.
Social Media Marketing provides a low impact factor on the target market, which means low annoyance. For example, if they dont like a particular blog youve written or arent interested in the topic, they dont have to read it. If your Tweets arent attractive, they can be ignored or you can be unfollowed. If your Facebook page doesnt provide the information they want, they can unfriend you. In short, these forms of Social Media Marketing give the reader a choice: read or not. Ignore or not. Follow or not. Respond or not.
As well, Social Media Marketing isnt just low cost; its cost effective when used wisely. Plenty of web hosts offer free small websites to host a blog. You could also use a myriad of free blogging sites, such as WordPress.com or Blogspot. Twitter is free to use, as is Facebook unless you want to post ads. While marketing is traditionally an expensive undertaking, this isnt true with Social Media Marketing. All you have to have is time. Therefore, it can truly be described as cost effective.
Lastly, you have global reach. As mentioned in the very beginning, consider Twitters 15 million active users. They arent all in the U.S. or all in the U.K " or all in any one country; Twitter, Facebook and the Internet in general is worldwide. If your business only deals in one country or another, fine fine; however, just because you reach out to a person in the U.K. doesnt mean that person has friends only in the U.K. They may very well pass on your company information to a friend in the U.S. " who just happens to need your product or service.
Social Media Marketing gives a small business fantastic opportunities that it may otherwise not have. So stop treating it like the unwanted redheaded stepchild embrace it and learn from it. Seldom has a marketing technique had so many benefits for so little cost. When you break it down, this form of marketing gives you the old time methods of personal connection, with the relatively new technology of social media that reaches out to hundreds of thousands of people with the mere click of a button.