Social Media Marketing: Expectations vs. Reality

What do you really expect from social media and is it as simple as that? Let’s talk about that!

Everybody can do that

Yes, everybody knows how to use social media, but it doesn’t mean that everybody is an expert for social media marketing. Just like if you can run, it doesn’t make you a professional athlete.

There is no such thing like quick fix and easy win. To be an expert for social media marketing, you need some special skills, education and experience. And if you want some actual results, engage an expert.

Digital marketing experts know the very specific processes that need to be performed at a very high level to see positive ROI. You can write copy–but can you write copy that sells? Or target the right people? Or know when to change your strategy? There’s more to it than the eye can see.

The whole point of engaging (and paying) an expert to provide you with a service is because they have the knowledge, time, resources and experience that you don’t have.Social media marketing experts do this for a living. It may seem shocking that this has become a “thing” and that people are actually carving a living out of social media, but be disparaging at your own risk.

Social media is free

Is it actually? It is free for amateur users, but if you use social media on business purpose, you have to pay for ads and make a clear advertising strategy. Successful strategy contains a budget, goals, type of content and community management. Great plan gives great results!

Doing the posts on your own (without adequate experience) doesn’t cost a thing, but also can leave you without a desired result. The time you spend creating and publishing content, you could use for a better purpose, for example, to build or run your business.

Without spending any money on paid promotion, you are not going to reach a large audience even if it takes months. Organic outreach helps you only when you invest some budget for paid promotion and start a strategy that combines both methods.

Paid ads give you a better chance to turn a profit because it is a cheaper and more targeted way to promote your business. But everyone who guarantees positive ROI is lying. You need to make sure you are creating ads that convert and showing them to the right people. You should always be testing different ad versions and re-targeting those that have interacted with them.

Social media advertising will give you quick results

Maybe if you are lucky! But in reality, you have to make a great effort to achieve your goals. Usually, there is no such thing like an overnight success in this area. Social media marketing isn’t an instant solution.

There is a lot more than maintaining a profile or setting up channels for your brand. It takes time, knowledge and commitment to make a difference. And commitment is crucial for success. Final result of social media marketing campaign still depends on the quality of content. Effective ads need continuous adjustments.

Keeping your content engaging requires you to understand your consumers’ behaviour and experiment. It is also very difficult if not impossible to answer everyone on social networks. Prioritize your time properly and try to manage such tasks using social media tools. Paid likes will not change the quality of your campaigns. You will still need amazing quality content ideas that speak to your target audience and get them engaged.

Social media is immediate, instant, rapid. Building content and engagement isn’t. If you want to create an interested and engaged organic following on social media, it will take time. Ordinarily, you’ll usually begin to experience meaningful organic engagement after months of regularly posting and sharing valuable, original and curated content. Of course, you could begin to see results sooner. But you have to pay for that.

One-size-fits-all approach

Maybe you think you can post the same thing across all social media pages, but there is no universal approach to all media. So that’s why you have to adjust your content to each platform. You can achieve this by refining your social media strategy. Your business objectives must be well aligned with your social media strategy plans, so you can get maximum benefit at the end of the day.

Coming up with brand new and original content ideas is very challenging when you have to update your communities on a daily basis. It requires a lot of time for a good amount of research, designing and marketing activities through dedicated team efforts. Each social network has its own target audience with set objectives, therefore requires you to properly articulate your message before communication. Your campaign message in Twitter might receive a lot of retweets but won’t get the same results in LinkedIn.

Content is king, so make it count! It is better to be present on only one or two social media pages, but with a developed strategy and defined goals than do it on ten different pages with the same approach. Some pages support links and infographics, and some other are better for visual content. Choose your presence on social media wisely according to your goals and create great content specially tailored for it.

So be wise and make the most of social media marketing for your business!