What is Social Media?
Social Media has become a very important component of successful web marketing campaigns especially when you are offering your product or service to the consumer. By creating accounts on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yelp and other social media opportunities, you can interact with your prospects in a way previously impossible. Viral marketing can increase your exposure significantly generating leads at very low cost. And social media is a free form of Internet Business Marketing.
How does it work?
One of the key components in successful social media marketing implementation is building “social authority”. Social authority is developed when an individual or organization establishes themselves as an “expert” in their given field or area, thereby becoming an “influencer” in that field or area.
It is through this process of “building social authority” that social media becomes effective. That is why one of the foundational concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the “conversation” with the goal that you become a relevant influence in that conversation.
However, this conversation participation must be cleverly executed because while people are resistant to marketing in general, they are even more resistant to direct or overt marketing through social media platforms. This may seem counter-intuitive but is the main reason building social authority with credibility is so important. A marketer can generally not expect people to be receptive to a marketing message in and of itself. According to Inc. Technology’s Brent Leary, “This loss of trust, and the accompanying turn towards experts and authorities, seems to be coinciding with the rise of social media and networks.”