In a blog entitled “Social Media – Is It Bank or Bust?”, Internet Marketing/SEO expert Josh Hoopes discusses the importance of leveraging popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace for e-commerce purposes. The most important factors that he cited were: a) the capability to grasp a wider audience through these uber-popular social media sites, b) being able to focus on a niche market related to your products or services, and c) tapping on what is probably the most basic and effective marketing tool ever known to man which is the word-of-mouth advertisement.
Let us talk about each of the above mentioned factors which makes these social media sites so relevant for your business.
Reaching a bigger audience. It is estimated that there are approximately 2 billion internet users around the world today as compared to only a few million in the late 90’s.
Combining this impressive statistic with the findings taken from recent studies which show that today’s typical online user actually spends about 25% of his time online to log into these popular networking sites, then it doesn’t take a mathematician to conclude that we are sitting on a virtual gold mine which should whet the appetite of any marketer. If you can tap into this resource then you will have a direct path to a niche market with similar wants and needs which you can seize in order to market your products and services.
Many businesses try to seize this opportunity provided by the emergence of these social networking sites by creating Facebook or Twitter accounts, with an overall objective of accumulating as many friends or followers as possible. The marketer must be creative when it comes to taking advantage of this opportunity however since it is much more difficult to market products and services in these social networking sites, as compared to celebrities for example who have their fame and/or name recognition to easily pull audiences to their account.
If you have done your research thoroughly and you have implemented your online marketing plan as it should be, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover how fast your products or services’ number of friends and followers can easily grow over a short period of time.
Targeting a specified niche market. Because friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter are usually similar-minded individuals who are most likely to have similar wants and needs, you will have the extraordinary opportunity of reaching out to a unique group of people who will most likely be receptive to your marketing initiatives. In this day and age, more and more people actually go to the internet to find specific products or services that they need as opposed to the other more traditional ways of advertisement. If you keep on putting yourself out there for your audience, most likely you will have their so-called top of mind and if you already have a system in place, then chances are: a sale will only be a click away.
The importance of word-of-mouth advertising. Trust is a commodity that is hard to come by. That is why most people would rather go for a product that is recommended by somebody they know rather than a product which is being advertised anonymously on TV or magazines. Although these social networking sites offer a much more modern take on the way we trade our trust currency as compared to the past, it can’t be denied that there are still bound to be some levels of trust involved among people who share the same group of friends or interests in a network. When you compare it with the other available options in today’s market, social networking sites are now the most reliable resource when it comes to referral or word-of-mouth marketing. In this regard, Internet Marketing and SEO expert Josh Hoopes emphasizes that social media can be a killer marketing strategy and PR medium for your business if it is implemented correctly.
