Why Does Social Media Matter?

My current marketing position has been a struggle to say the least.  I was hired right out of college to create a marketing campaign for a company that had never attempted any kind of marketing.  When I took the job, I realized that there was another catch: I did not have a budget.  My first response: What can I possibly do without anyone else to teach me and without any money to work with?

Luckily, over a few weeks, I began to get VERY involved on the internet.  I knew a lot about social media and knew that this might be the outlet that I could use to drive results.  So my current response is: What can I do to impress my company and clients while successfully marketing with no budget?

Look no further, the answer is social media.  Social media has a wide number of different platforms, allowing businesses to successfully select what they want to do.  Do you want to make videos? YouTube. Are you trying to create articles of content? Blog. Facebook. Are you trying to get a quick following and spread the word? Facebook. Twitter.  Trying to be a wedding planner? Pinterest (Sorry, I had to add this one).

Social media provides us with a rare opportunity to connect directly with people.  We can get linked up with businesses or individuals.  We can form great relationships while getting to know a lot about a company or person.  So these are my reasons of why a business should use social media:

Free This is probably the most obvious one, especially in my position. Most, not all, of social media is free.  You can get more performance out of them through paying more (LinkedIn members, Facebook Ads, Twitter Promotions), but you do not have to pay anything to start.  All you need to do is sign up and get a good user name.  Generally, something short and sweet will do the trick.  Think about your market and products when creating a name.

People WILL See You  Sometimes you may have to branch out and follow people first or try to connect with them, but they generally will respond.  If you provide good content, whether it is general or specific (USA Olympic information or a Rome Braves game review), people will take notice.  It helps you create great word of mouth marketing!

Trials  Social media allow for you to test out some new and creative ideas before running them in more costly places.  Why have something bomb in the pages of TIME magazine? Just put it on a Facebook page and monitor the reach and engagement of the public.

Caution: Social media and marketing campaigns take time.  Do not automatically get discouraged if it does not take off.  Very few things happen overnight, so keep you head up and relax.  If not, then its back to the drawing board.

Guys vs. Girls

Guys vs. Girls

As we have moved into a world of social media, we must consider that some platforms work much better for one sex than the other.  This brings up two influential social media sites: Google + and Pinterest.

Google +, the platform that took $580 million to create, allows for you to create different circles of the people you know.  While I believe that a person should aim to be consistent in their life, showing who they are at all times, Google + lets you share certain aspects with only specific people.  The demographic of Google +: it consists of 69.4% males.

Why is this? Well, Google + hasn’t really gone viral or mainstream.  It has a specific niche, with 7 of the top 8 occupations on Google + being: Engineer, Developer, Software Engineer, Designer, Web Developer, Programmer and Software Developer.  Clearly, Google + is for a more computer focused crowd, which happens to be a profession dominated by men.

Pinterest, a pinning website of photos and videos, is about 75% female.  The ratio of my friends on Pinterest is 10:1, favoring the women.  The site was not designed just for women, even though it has been taken over by feminine content ranging from wedding planning and home decorations to recipes and fashion.  The vast amounts of crafting and hair advice, among other things, just does not encourage men to participate.  Even though a similar site, Gentlemint, was created for only men, it has been mostly unsuccessful and men have ever so slowly started joining Pinterest.

The main things we can learn: women love images and they love collecting.  They find it relaxing to look at photos of things they are interested it.  Due to women being more emotional, caring, and nurturing than men, they trust more easily than men.  This allows for them to trust the content of their following and followers, providing for more sales and interactive campaigns on Pinterest.

If you are a company targeting women consumers, you needed to be on Pinterest with a marketing campaign yesterday.