Social media is now presents biggest opportunity in all small business marketing plans. But the main thing business owners are struggling with, is how to use social media to sell stuff. This is a very fine line, since social media has traditionally been a helping, discussing and suggesting platform. Can it really be used to sell?
Tab Juice has put together an excellent infographic, sourcing their content from JeffBullas.com, SocialQuickster.com and OurSocialTimes.com. And the evidence is clear. Done correctly, businesses can potentially start to take their share of a potential $30 Billion Dollar Pie!
Using Facebook The Right Way
Of course, like all marketing tools, Facebook can be used the right way, and it can definitely be used the wrong way. And it comes down to putting together a great strategy first.
Even if you are a beginner, you need to have a plan of how you will use Facebook for your business. The plan needs to detail who will be responsible for the Facebook page, if you will allocate any funds to designing a profile image and/or landing page, as well as if you will use Facebook Ads to promote your business.
It should also stipulate how you plan to attract “fans” and how often you will engage them? It should also determine if Social Commerce is for you…
Let’s have a look at TabJuice’s suggestion for using Social Commerce:
What do you think? Is this only suitable for t-shirt companies? Or can your business use social commerce as well?
I welcome all feedback and thoughts. Please share below.
Social Media might work if companies and brands stop putting up their ‘advertisements’ as seen on TV/ Newspapers. They might really want to create some funny and engaging posts and videos that people would want to share. Of course, they can put up their brand/product at the end, clearly marking it as an advertisement. All people are doing these days is to bribe others to join and like their page, which at best is an extremely short term strategy.
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All people are doing these days is to bribe others to join and like their page, which at best is an extremely short term strategy…They might really want to create some funny and engaging posts and videos that people would want to share…
Love your post on social commerce. I recently did an interview with Fracisco Rosales of SocialMouths where he spoke about small businesses using social commerce that you may find interesting http://venpop.com/2011/small-business-in-social-commerce-with-francisco-rosales/
Twitter: ExtremeJohn
October 29, 2011 at 2:27 am | Permalink
Amazing infographic and the figures are totally awesome. Very inspiring to use social media as one of the great marketing strategies. But of course, the infographic had limited social media to Facebook while other social networks such as YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn also have the power to promote brands and products of a business. But the infographic is convincing enough. Two thumbs up!
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Thanks for sharing this infographic! I think I might be able to help you dig deeper on item #5…
I’m at a startup called Curebit.com, and we build referrals platforms for any business. We’re sitting on a ton of data about how consumers share and buy in social media (closing in on about 750k transactions).
Would this be something your readers and clients be interested in seeing?
Here’s some cool stuff we’re quantifying:
- Social cost vs. financial incentive. We’ve found that a financial incentive to get a customer to share is limited by the risk of spamming their friends.
- The impact of the actual messaging. Though mundane, the copy actually can impact sharing by over 2x.
- The kinds of products that get shared. Two winners we see are products with female audiences and “uniqueness”.
Please be in touch if you’d like to see our data findings!
-Jack
Wow! This is an amazing graphical presentation. Social media has become the latest trend in advertising circles all over the world. I have read tons of articles on this topic over the net in the last few months. However, this is the first post which has conveyed a beautiful message without words and in simple graphics. That is how social media is effective and people are interested to share things with each other with ease. I appreciate your efforts and I agree with you 100%.