Social media networks are a goldmine for businesses. They can connect customers to your business, offer a way to share valuable content and media, connect with your business’ blog, and in general, boost every aspect of your online marketing strategy. They’re growing as well – Facebook just reached one billion users, according to CNN’s Aaron Smith.
Carefully choosing which social media networks to use is integral for any business. While you don’t want to overextend your efforts, there is a balancing act present. Limiting your business with too few social networks can also be a concern.
Florists could, for instance, take advantage of the growing network of Pinterest. Described as the “new black” by Rimma Kats, it is emerging as a major player in this area. And due to the obvious relevance of high-quality pictures on Pinterest and the products at florist shops, there is some promise here.
Take Sephora, who has Pin It buttons on all 14,000 products on its company site. By catering to customers that like to interact with its offerings, companies can leverage this audience and social media site. Add a link on the picture and it can help drive traffic and have a viral effect.
Consider which social networks could fit into your business strategy. Perhaps a site like Pinterest could generate interest in your business, and offer cross-marketing opportunities with your site, blog, and other social networks. Contact us for more information on the world of online marketing, and how to make the most of it to improve your business.
Good points made here. It’s important to analyze what social networks pocould help you to reach your target audience (and new groups of potential customers). However, I think one has to have a general social media a strategy and connect different marketing efforts with each other. If you just use social networks and other online platforms in random way without fitting this in a broader strategy, you’re really limiting your results.
You got a really good point, KennyK. Social network marketing strategies should not be stand-alone. They should be parallel with the overall marketing strategy that the company is adapting.
You are so right about being selective with your Social Network Marketing plan. It seems like new social networking sites are popping up everyday, and a person could easily have their entire marketing strategy hijacked by the time requirements needed to grow and maintain their social media presence. Worse still, could you imagine having spent the bulk of your time and budget on MySpace which has fallen out of favor with the masses?
This would truly be frustrating. I also suggest you make regular monitoring of your success indicators in your social networking initiatives. In this way, you can easily detect whether you are getting something out of these social media platforms.
I think it’s best to invest time (and maybe some money) on the biggest networks only. If some social network is already declining for years, I would not put too much extra time in it. You could always get advice fro social media experts to find out what networks could benefit your business the most.
A flower shop may have this visual component that is needed in Pinterest. Additionally, it seems that many members of this social network are female. So Pinterest could be a good match for florists who want to be present on social networks.
I agree that a business could benefit from trying to be present on all social networks. However at the beginning, I think that it may be easier to track a social media campaign results by trying these networks one at a time.
I agree that a floral business should carefully track and monitor their results when using social media and not become overextended from the outset.
That said, I think Facebook is a given at this point. It’s important for businesses to have a Facebook fan page as customers and prospective customers do turn to Facebook when trying to find out more about a company. It offers a robust platform from which to interact with customers and prospects.
Like Pinterest there is a tremendous opportunity to make use of photos, illustrations and other graphics on Facebook.
I also have a link on all of my images on my sites and it does pay off. I have a site that gets over 40% of it’s traffic because of images and Pinterest. People are finding me in the image searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing and they visit my site, find an image they like and they pin it.
That pin gets re-pinned and so on. I got hundreds of pins within days or even hours in some cases. Pinterest is the place to be when you are in a niche that is somewhat depended on images.