Social Media Marketing: 7 Myths That Might Shock You

Social media has become very popular in the digital marketing world. Brands cannot resist on using social media on their digital marketing initiatives. It has become a necessity to have a social media presence in order to reach out to the target customers.

Most digital marketers have used social media, however there are still some false beliefs that need to be cleared. Because of the fallacies and wrong expectations, digital marketers tend to believe that their social media campaigns do not work. If you are already using or considering using social media for your marketing campaigns, you should keep in mind these 7 social media marketing myths to set your expectations straight.

1. Social media marketing is free. Although social media signup and usage is absolutely free, using it for marketing purposes is not. Using social media in the leisure manner that you normally do will not give you the results you expect. You need to do social media advertising to reach the target audience. You need to post good content that is aligned to your marketing goals to entice your audience. You have to come up with a nice banner or image to make your post appealing. You may even need to create a video to make your content more interesting. All of these will cost you money one way or another.

2. You can easily make your content viral. Sure this happens sometimes, but very rarely. In order for your content to get a lot of attention, you have to work really hard on pushing it to your audience. No matter how good your content is, someone still has to see it and recommend it to others. Regular sharing and advertising are some of the things you may consider doing to promote your content.

3. You need to use all the big social media sites to succeed. This is not necessary. You should just focus your energy on 2 to 3 sites that you think are applicable. This all depends on your target audience. You have to figure out what social media platforms your target audience is in. For example, if your target customers are specifically professional marketing managers, LinkedIn should be the social media of focus here. Then consider 2 other secondary platforms that these marketing managers may be using.

4. Social media is only for the young ones. This might be true in the beginning but not anymore. According to a study conducted by iStrategyLabs, Facebook has 276% growth in users aged 35-54 in 2009 and is its fastest growing segment. I have a first-hand experience on this. My parents and all their friends are really into Facebook. They use it to reach out to their old friends.

5. You should make money on all the content you share in social media. In social media, the more you give, the more you receive. The main purpose of sharing content is not to make money out of it but to build credibility and trust. Once you have established yourself as an expert in your chosen business niche, then people will start looking for you to see how you can help solve their problems or challenges.

6. Social media is everything you need for your digital marketing. Though social media is a very powerful marketing tool, you should not forget about other marketing tools out there. Social media should be a part of your integrated marketing communications strategy whereby you use as many marketing tools you can leverage on as possible. There are other aspects of marketing that social media cannot cover so you should have other tools to cover the rest.

7. Social media results cannot be measured. New tools to measure social media results are popping up on a regular basis. There are tools that can measure blog comments, mentions in the media, traffic stats, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, comments on your content, real-time blog advertising results, click-throughs to your website etc. You just have to do more research to be updated on these tools.

There are other myths on social media that I did not cover. You will realize them as you progress in your journey with digital marketing.

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