In 2012, your social media marketing strategy is going to be more important than ever before. The responsiveness of consumers to traditional advertising continues to dwindle, and consumers continue to rely on their friends for information on the best products and services. In such an environment, social media easily becomes one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses.
No matter what you were
doing or how well you were doing it, you’ll need to make some changes to your social media strategy in 2012. In 2011, you were probably focusing on Twitter and Facebook. In 2012, you must pay just as much attention to Google+. The fact is that Google+ has the potential to be a real game-changer for both social media marketing and search engine optimization. This is because Google+ affects personalized search results.
Two next door neighbors with
Google accounts asia mobile number list or who use Chrome will get different results from a Google search because of their past search history. Likewise, two users of Yahoo! mail will get personalized results from their Yahoo! search. There is also evidence of correlation between Facebook ‘likes’ and search results. And until recently, Twitter was open to Google’s search crawlers.
Google+ adds another dimension
Internet searches, however. The search history of your friends on Google+ will now affect your own search results. If you and your friend are both looking for a new HDTV, you’ll each see products the other looked at appear at the top of your search results (assuming you were both logged in to Google+ while searching). The potential SEO power of this Google+ feature has sent Yahoo! running to Facebook to establish a similar partnership, and it looks like Bing may join them. Therefore, 2012 will likely be defined by a trend to encourage your customers to market for you through their social media. By year’s end, it may make a lot of difference in how visible your company is online.
If your business has not already established
a solid presence in social media, you will need to this year. Having a Facebook page is a must because it is currently the most popular website in the world. Using Twitter is essential because it is among the most popular sources of consumer reviews. Getting on Google+ will be essential if you want to show up in the search results of your customer’s friends. Encouraging your customers to chat about you in each of these mediums will be crucial to your future marketing efforts.
Traditional marketing will probably continue to decrease in effectiveness. Speaking personally, I tend to expect the opposite of whatever a commercial says. When I see a TV ad or a billboard, my first thought is, “that’s a product to be suspicious of.” I believe that good products speak for themselves. If it’s not heavily marketed but I still see people buying it, that tells me:
That the company spent more money
on building quality products than on advertising
That it is selling because it works and not because customers are being “mind-controlled”
If other people are anything like me, they will wait to buy your product until a few of their friends mention it in social media. Then, they will look online for more information before finally visiting your website or your store. This makes it crucial to boost the positive chatter about your business among your customers.
The U.S. Army provides a great example of marketing. Their commercials were among the few I really liked as a teenager. Their constant calls to “be all that you can be” synced well with my personal values and, for a brief moment, I actually considered enlisting. I echo that sentiment to you. Your business can be all that it can be when you focus on building products and offering services that will get people talking positively and excitedly about you.
There is much talk in the business
world today about “best practices,” as corporations try to regain some of the trust and customer loyalty they have lost over the last few decades. To me, the best weapon in a company’s arsenal is to change their marketing from an aggressive customer-as-adversary approach (which is honestly how I perceive many advertisements) to a customer-as-champion approach where I can’t wait to tell every friend and acquaintance how good a product is.
