Offline businesses all over the world are embracing social media marketing as an important part of marketing offline businesses online. Done correctly, social media and social networking can create a huge jump in the number of views and bottom line profits, but if mishandled, social media can also be the death of your offline business.
No longer something companies can simply choose to ignore, sites like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and the myriad of industry-specific forums and directories now represent a growing market share influence. And unlike previous methods of advertising your business offline, social networking sites offer free ways for small businesses and home-based businesses to compete with global corporations on a nearly level playing field.
But it also represents pitfalls that most companies haven’t had to deal with before, pitfalls that can irreparably impact your business and, in extreme cases, ruin your brand, product, or even the business itself. Reputation management has become a vital part of both local businesses and global corporations now that the Internet has impacted both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) markets.
How Effective Social Media Marketing Helps Offline Businesses
Over a billion people use social media these days, many of them using multiple platforms on a daily or at least weekly basis. This presents a fast and easy access global marketplace made up of a large number of subsets representing both local markets and niche-specific markets. Never before have companies had instant access to such a large number of targeted leads, or free ways to access those leads.
This scenario offers a number of advantages for companies that use social media effectively: announcing new product launches, ease of customer service, brand management, reputation management, customer engagement and interaction, sales notifications, and others. events, building goodwill and advertising of charitable affiliations, real-time competitor marketing analysis, building community within your target market, and positioning your business to be found by those looking for your products or services. This last point is especially important when promoting local businesses online, as more and more consumers use the Internet to find local shops and services, especially on mobile devices.
How ineffective social media marketing hurts offline businesses
The biggest potential disaster for offline businesses when it comes to social media marketing is not having a presence on at least the big sites like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, etc., even more specialized sites like YouTube and Pinterest. Your competition will keep your name and brands front and center in the mind of your target market, while you will be out of sight and out of mind.
The second most damaging is not paying attention to your online reputation. Failing to respond to customer inquiries or complaints, failing to address negative concerns regarding your company, brands, or even your industry as a whole can erode the trust of your current and potential customers, and trust is a huge factor in trade and business today.
Publicly discussing controversial topics on your business pages will also alienate parts of your audience. Save topics like religion and politics for dinner parties, and focus your online activities around your company, brands, industry, and related organizations important to your audience. Mentioning that you made a donation to a local charity can be beneficial, but discussing the conditions in your community that led to the need for that charity is best left to the editors and columnists of the local newspaper and television.
Social media marketing is only one aspect of promoting local businesses online, although it is very important. Familiarize yourself with both the big popular sites and those specific to your niche or your local area and start building your presence and reputation on each of them. If you feel you lack the necessary skills or time to run your online presence effectively, then hire social media marketers to do it for you, and if you’re a local business, make sure they have relevant experience. recent in marketing local business online. also.
