When it comes to your social media marketing strategy on Facebook, what percentage of your content mix should be status updates, links, photos, or videos? Wouldn’t it be great to know what the best brands in your specific industry are doing and the market as a whole? Check out this new study from Simply Measured.
For most small businesses marketing has changed. Today most searches for a local business will start on mobile devices and not the big yellow book in the past. Consumers now consider reviews, testimonials, case studies and social media to determine if a company is worth doing business with. Because of this, the competition is greater than ever for business and a positive reputation can be a key factor in standing out.
We all have a line of credibility in our mind. When we hear an idea we immediately place either above or below this line. Below the line we discredit them and above the line we are willing to accept it. We also have a line of “super credibility” that we reach when we hear an of something that we are blown away and accept it immediately.
In the world of online and social media marketing, credibility can be lost or gained over time. Some may seem credible to start and lose that over time while other may have less credibility at first then gain credibility over time and even become super credible.
In the example below see if you can decide what order they would go in listing from “dismiss,” “credible,” and “super credible.”
It is easy to see which of these three business listings you would consider credible, super credible or dismiss out of hand. This example illustrates just how credibility is layered over a typical local search.
It is important to be aware of how potential customers become aware of your business and how credible your business looks as visitors travel down their path to purchase.
Online credibility is an iterative process that is never truly finished and not something to simply check off your list. A single new review each month may be plenty for some businesses, while others may need daily reviews. The point is to tailor the maintenance of your credibility to the unique needs of your business.
So the prevailing advice to reach the Millennial market goes something like this: “If you want to reach the Millennial market demographic, put all your marketing budget into mobile advertising and social media. That’s where it’s all happening.”
And if you follow the logical next step from a 2010 Pew Reach study that said:
Millennials outpace older Americans in virtually all types of internet and cell use. They are more likely to have their own social networking profiles, to connect to the internet wirelessly when away from home or work, and to post video of themselves online.
you would logically conclude that the never-ending proliferation of new social media channels, from Snapchat to Vine and who-knows-what, would make you think that using email to reach this target market would be a waste of time. Nope. Guess again.
Email is the original social media, and studies have shown that when it comes to dealing with brands, Millennials prefer email for a variety of reasons.
Steve Dille at MarketingLand put together an extremely thorough analysis of all this that has some compelling takeaways for marketing types to chew on and digest. As it turns out, the “always connected” generation has one constant among all the multitude of channels demanding their attention. Email.
One point Steve makes brilliantly is that while millennials use social channels like no one else, the key here is that they are social channels. When it comes to consumer-to-brand communication, there’s an entirely different dynamic in play. And for millennials, that means email. Which means fine tuning your email marketing machine so that it resonates with the millennial market.
Read Steve’s article here. It’s well worth it.