I hear all the time that people are still skeptical about investing time and money in social media marketing campaigns. I mean, seriously? What more evidence do you need? Stop throwing out the “But, how do we measure ROI with social media?”. Just ask Vitamin Water, JetBlue, Dell, and Southwest how their investment in social media has worked out for them. Increased SALES is how you measure the ROI, and just ask the local restaurant or retail store that’s running an effective social media marketing campaign how it’s working out for them. It’ll still take a couple of years for the dissenters who hold onto old-fashioned marketing methods, so for those of you who still need to be convinced, here are 50 ways why social media marketing is here to stay: (in no particular order)

1. It’s two-way marketing
2. It’s a great customer service tool
3. It gives the customer a voice
4. It eliminates the need to spend a ton of money on focus groups.  Your following IS your focus group
5. Ask a marketing research question, and you get instant data.
6. The only cost to produce it is hiring great talent
7. Complaint resolutions are documented for other customers to see
8. The viral nature of it is closely related to the viral nature of word-of-mouth marketing
9. It IS word-of-mouth marketing, but in a digital sense.
10. You can make mistakes and explain why you made it
11. Intimate contact with your loyal customers and target market
12. You can focus on a very specific target market
13. It sends traffic back to your website
14. It builds inbound links to your website
15. It’s great for search engine optimization
16. Facebook pages can be used like a forum
17. Ability to create multiple Twitter profiles for multiple uses
18. Allows you to respond to what’s being said about your brand/business
19. It’s more natural than traditional marketing channels
20. You control the message
21. Endless creative promotion possibilities
22. Allows customers to participate in product development
23. It has the ability to reach a large amount of consumers on a perpetual time line.
24. It can reach a large amount of customers and fans in real-time.
25. Customers can respond and react to new business information and products in real-time.
26. It has the ability to increase sales
27. It has to ability to attract new clients
28. It can help you establish yourself as an expert or authority in your industry
29. Allows you to respond to complaints before negative word-of-mouth takes place.
30. Allows employees to be brand evangelizers.
31. The technology is free and open source
32. Social media is now adopted by most age groups.
33. Allows a competitive advantage over your competitors that aren’t using it
34. Allows a competitive advantage over your competitors that are abusing it or not using it correctly
35. Gives the ability to update customers about promotions and specials in real-time.
36. It has more than just a monetary return on investment.
37. We are social creatures.
38. It helps you build trust with the consumer
39. Experimenting won’t cost you a lot of money
40. It’s not as time consuming as you might think
41. Your customer’s opinion counts
42. Did we mention the technology is free?
43. It spans across all media, including photos, videos, audio, and text
44. It’s SO MUCH LESS annoying than text/SMS marketing
45. Its effectiveness BLOWS text/SMS marketing out of the water
46. Did I mention text/SMS marketing sucks?
47. You’re building an army of loyal customers we affectionately call “regulars”.
48. Builds team/employee morale
49. It can be used as a recruiting tool
50. Facebook has over 400 million active users worldwide.  Twitter has over 75 million users.  YouTube and Facebook are the #2 and #3 most visited websites in the world. Every second a new blog is created. Need I say more?

If you haven’t embraced social media for your business yet, then you’ve been living under a rock.  It’s here, and it’s here to stay.  It has a real return on investment, it WILL grow your sales if done right, and it DOES require someone who knows what they’re doing to run a successful campaign.  Are you convinced yet?  If so, check out my company’s website at Presence Media, and give us a call or contact us to discuss starting a social media marketing campaign for your small business.

I have been so pissed off at social media lately. Every social media outlet eventually becomes a cesspool of advertisements and get-rich-quick schemes. Why do humans always make an effort to destroy good things? Twitter needs help, or it will die quickly. Tomorrow, I will post my grievances toward Facebook and Twitter. But for those of you who actually care about social media and don’t intend on abusing it, here are some tips to help bring value to your social media contributions.

Post Relevant Content

Whether it’s your blog, facebook stream, twitter stream, friendfeed, youtube, or social bookmarking account, make sure that what you post is relevant and interesting to others. People follow you for four different reasons: they are your friend, family member, co-worker, or because you are an expert in your field. Ask yourself this questions before you post a link, video, or article: “Will my audience find this interesting and/or entertaining?” Post content that you are passionate about, because you most likely have a group of friends who are passionate about that, too.

Stop Updating So Much

Honestly, put Tweet Deck away. I follow hundreds of people that I follow, and I must use user lists to filter the people that I want to read on Twitter, because there are a handful of people that I follow that post every 2 minutes, literally. And it’s not even a batch of automated tweets. These are real tweets from ADDICTS. Maybe I am just jealous because you somehow find a way to update social media more often than me, but just take a minute to realize that Twitter and Facebook are not a stream of consciousness.

Engage In Conversation

It’s called SOCIAL media, but the social part is often forgotten by people who just want to advertise themselves and their products. I think that social media is a great way to market a brand or product, but it’s not effective if it’s annoying and one-sided. Use social media to meet new people and engage in meaningful conversations. Large corporations are finding that outlets such as Facebook and Twitter far better marketing tools for existing customers rather than attracting new customers. This is because social media gives corporations a quick, easy, and free way to communicate with customers and get their feedback about a product or service.

Go through your last 100 tweets and count how many were @replies. It might surprise you.

Don’t Be a Jerk

I still can’t believe that many people haven’t realized that your social media presence directly correlates with your reputation in the “real world”. Before you write anything, remember that anyone and everyone has the ability to find it and read it. I love discussions and debates on Facebook about political and social issues, but I don’t ever write anything that would make me sound like a 10 year old. I also don’t bully people or blatantly make fun of them (other than old buddies that know I am joking around). It’s so much easier to be bolder on the internet than it is face-to-face with someone. Make sure you choose your words carefully and no one likes a jerk on social media.

Are You A Giver?

With social media, we tend to fall into the mentality that everyone should want to comment on our blog or status updates. Everyone should want to re-tweet our tweets or post a link of my article to their Twitter stream. But what have you done for them lately? Are you participating in their social media lives? Remember, you must always give in order to receive.

Do all of these things, and you won’t have to read a 100 different articles about how to increase your following on Twitter or Facebook. You’ll naturally gain a following that is interested in your life and what you are passionate about. You’ll also build your personal brand, build contacts for potential job offers, and gain leads to clients for your small business. Social media is like anything else in life, use it the way it was intended to be used, and you’ll be the most benefit out of it.