***5 Social Media Misconceptions

Do Social Media sites have you stumped? In all actuality, they can be really easy to figure out once you've started messing around with them. Most business owners gather the wrong impression about social media and how to efficiently use social media sites to their advantage. Like most things in life, the longer you wait to get started, the more complicated it can get. The sooner you try social media networking, the more ahead of the ballgame you'll be. Here are five reasons why you might have steered away from creating a social media account, but have no fear, I'm here to clarify! 1. Blogging is a "tool." Well, not exactly. Blogging is more of a business strategy. A blog can help a business merge all aspects of their online presence and business strategies, such as including links to social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and YouTube. All of these aspects are part of your marketing strategy and when linked together, it helps everything grow together. 2. Social Media Sites are all about numbers. A lot of the time when seeking information about Facebook or Twitter, you will see people who are utterly happy with their 20,000 followers or 50,000 fans. However, those numbers don’t mean a thing if those people aren't interacting with you or your business. The main reason to have an account on these sites is to build relationships and influence your consumers. It may help to spread the word about your business by having that many followers or fans, but to really build a business; you need one-on-one interaction with each person, or at least a small amount to begin with. It is best to try to follow people with the same interests in order to gain popularity for your business or products. 3. Automation means having to use tools. Wrong. To successfully use automation means that with the followers or fans you've already received, they are most likely going to recommend your product or business to their friends and family. If you use tools to generate a huge number of followers and fans, you are less likely to gain personable popularity. You will most likely get other people trying to sell you things or even get a few spam accounts. If you can wait it out, have patience, and build a fan base by targeting specific consumers, you are much better off. Don’t just use generating tools to add and keep adding people who would have no interest in your business. 4. You need to be everywhere on the web. Most likely you've heard or read that you need to have an online presence with every social media account, one on Facebook, one on Youtube, one on Twitter, etc. Not necessarily. You need to determine where your customers are located? What are they doing and what is popular for them to use? More than likely you don't need accounts everywhere and can use just a few social media account. Pick a couple and work diligently with those and gain the targeted traffic you need. 5. Not gaining any ROI. If you feel you are not gaining any ROI, then you may be under estimating or just doing something incorrectly. The computer company Dell has made over $6.5 million on Twitter. However, even small companies have had great results by using social media sites. To market your business through social media, you have to communicate your intentions appropriately to your fans or followers, otherwise it won't work. You should always let your customers know what's going on and what you are all about. Also, ROI isn't all about money and profits, if you are aiming at increasing your newsletter subscriptions or sales leads, this should also be calculated into your ROI. Those leads can eventually be converted into your ROI as sales. Social media sites can be for gaining direct sales, but they are also really good leads that can turn into sales later.