Can Social Media Take Over Search? Click here http://bit.ly/h51vvG to read more! What do you think? #NMP

Click here http://bit.ly/h51vvG to read full article!

In the past, the big way to advertise your business has typically been to optimize your web content for a se arch. Customers looking for something you provide typically use a search engine to find your service on the web, and being up higher on the returned search list, especially on Google, has been the biggest boon to e-marketers yet. However, with more and more people using social media services like Facebook to communicate with one another, advertisers and marketers have begun finding ways to actively market their products and services directly to people who are likely to use them.

Social media definitely has its advantages over search optimization, the first being brand loyalty. Customers who typically buy from a company who offers their product or service online once are likely to use the same company again if their experience was good enough. If you have not done so already,  download our Case Study we published for “Opportunities with Social Media For Public Companies.” Often times a web service can start a social media page in order to advertise their wares, and even provide incentive for previous customers to return, such as discounts or coupons. This is also a good way to monitor what kind of numbers you are getting as far as not only customers, but potential customers, as they will likely hang around your social media page waiting for discount codes, sales and other goodies, something a search engine cannot do.

However, this is mostly dependent on having a customer base already subscribing to your social media assets (profiles), although sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn theoretically provide content geared towards the consumer. These can be useful in creating new customer relationships, but the strongest leads for new customers will come from a well executed social media marketing campaign, and/or still going to come from optimizing your web presence for search engines.

So while social media has made bounds towards increasing the amount of commerce a given company receives online, it clearly works better in the context of bringing return business around. Using this strategy in conjunction with using social media to keep repeat business is likely the optimal model a company would wish to pursue online.

While great successes have been built on both search optimization and social media alone, most solid business models will now include both strategies in order to attain and keep business. Alone, each is a powerful tool in its own right, but used together in the correct manner, they form a more powerful business strategy that will keep customers, both new and returning, flowing to your website.

 

If you have been interested in social media give us a call, we can help answer any questions you might have. You can start by reviewing our Social Media page on NewMediaPlus.Com.