Before we delve into “why”, maybe we should first establish what exactly social media marketing entails. In a nutshell it involves the combined marketing effort of various online social network website models that are designed to suit your needs. All current social network sites serve different purposes and therefore your company or business should target these accordingly.  A lot can be said about social media marketing but lets use and example to make this point more poignant.

When used appropriately social networking can yield awesome results like when Barack Obama was running for president. Using a properly structured social media marketing plan and backed by internet marketers that know how to wield this powerful weapon allowed Obama’s campaign to raise over $32 Million dollars in January alone. After this highly successful social media syndication campaign Obama’s team managed to rake in over $50 Million dollars in the month of February without even attending one single fundraiser.

Yes those are huge sums of money but to be honest he was backed by a dedicated team all driving towards one goal. With this in mind it goes to show what you can achieve if you’ve got a well thought-out social media marketing plan and employ the right staff member/s to ensure it gets done ethically.

Benefits of Using Social Media Marketing

The biggest benefits of using social networking are low costs vs. big opportunities. The fact that any company can build a list, do market research, get the word out, perform lead generation or market a product at such low costs must surely be a major reason and encouragement to invest time and resources into social media marketing strategies.

A massive 85% of internet marketers have shown that their social marketing efforts have generated significant exposure for their businesses. This tie’s in with the added benefit of gaining the all important eyeballs of potential life-long loyal customers.
The next best benefit is most obviously website traffic which as any online business owner knows is essential to making sales and beneficial business relationships and partnerships.

Marketing Tribes

These days the web is all-a buzz about building tribes and social media syndication of content for the aim of reaching new consumers. It is suggested that you have a look at Seth Godin’s book “Tribes: We need you to Lead Us.” The book focus’s on the topic that people will always instinctively follow or feel the need to belong to a tribe which is in essence an identity. As a marketer you can learn from these principles and adapt these concepts into your business model.

By knowing how to predict consumer actions in this cut-throat business climate will give any company increased leverage over other competitors.  Social media marketing isn’t just a “fad” it is here to stay and if you don’t learn how to use these all important social networking tools, your future online may become bleak very soon. This is not a fear tactic but merely the simple truth that consumers follow or take on “tribe” identities and by learning how to leverage on that will mean the difference between eating lovely sauced thick steak or stale bread for dinner.

“The path to success with social media marketing is always to play the game. Become an active member of a community and deliver the sort of content and help that other members are looking for and you’ll build a network, respect, your brand — and your website.”

Google Analytics  Annotations

Every webmaster can relate to this scenario; you go into your Google analytics account and see spikes of traffic but don’t know where the hell it came from or how it happened. This rings true especially if you run or own an internet based company and have loads of staff working for you that check and work on one Google analytics account.

If this has been a problem for you then Google Annotations is the answer. This handy little feature has the ability log events in a timeline, so if different people are working on a project they can make notes at a specific point in the timeline which in turn will make it easier for yourself and other members of your staff to actually see what’s happening when you query those points or spikes in your online traffic.

We reckon everyone using Google Analytics Annotations including ourselves here at marketing tribe, are going to enjoy and agree that this great feature will enhance our ability to track our traffic with more precision.

For more information view this brief clip for more information on how this works.