Ng Deborah - Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies

Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 4th Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017935000

ISBN 978-1-119-33039-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-33042-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-32992-3 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

You sat back, sighing with relief that your website was running faultlessly, optimized for search engines, and producing traffic, leads, and sales. Maybe you ventured into email marketing or pay-per-click advertising to generate new customers. Then you thought with satisfaction, Ill just let the money roll in.

Instead, you were inundated with stories about Facebook pages, Twitter and tweets, blogs and podcasts, Pinterest, Instagram, and all other manner of social media buzz. By now youve probably tried more than one of these social media platforms. Perhaps you havent seen much in the way of results, or youre ready to explore ways to expand your reach, increase customer loyalty, and grow your sales with social media.

Much as you might wish it were otherwise, you must now stay up to date with rapidly changing options in the social media universe. As a marketer, you have no choice when more than 75 percent of Internet users visit blogs and social media and when your position in search engine results may depend on the recency and frequency of social media updates. Social media marketing is an essential component of online marketing.

The statistics are astounding: Facebook has more than 1.18 billion daily active users as of the third quarter of 2016; more than 2.7 million blog posts are published every day; more than 300 million tweets were sent per day on average in 2016; and nearly 5 billion hours of video are viewed each month on YouTube. New company names and bewildering new vocabulary terms continue to flood the online world: Periscope, Snapchat, pinning, location tagging, and sentiment monitoring, for example.

Should your new business get involved in social media marketing? Is it all more trouble than its worth? Will you be hopelessly left behind if you dont participate? If you jump in, or if youve already waded into the social media waters, how do you keep it all under control and who does the work? Which platforms are the best for your business? Should you take advantage of new channels or stick with the comfortable ones youve already mastered? This book helps you answer both sets of questions: Should your business undertake social media marketing? If so, how? (Quick answer: If your customers use a social media service, use it. If not, skip it.)

The philosophy behind this book is simple: Social media marketing is a means, not an end in itself. Social media services are tools, not new worlds. In the best of all worlds, you see results that improve customer acquisition, retention, and buying behavior in other words, your bottom line. If this sounds familiar, thats because everything you already know about marketing is correct.

Having the most likes on Facebook or more retweets of your posts than your competitors doesnt mean much if these achievements dont have a positive effect on your business. Throughout this book, youll find concrete suggestions for applying social media tactics to achieve those goals.

If you undertake a social media marketing campaign, we urge you to keep your plans simple, take things slowly, and always stay focused on your customers. Most of all, follow the precepts of guerrilla marketing: Target one niche market at a time, grow that market, and then reinvest your profits in the next niche.

We visualize our readers as savvy small-business owners, marketers in companies of any size, and people who work in any of the multiple services that support social media efforts, such as advertising agencies, web developers, graphic design firms, copywriting, or public relations. We assume that you

• Already have or will soon have a website or blog that can serve as the hub for your online marketing program