Why Social Media could it be because is it free?
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Mon, Mar 08, 2010
Why Social media sounds like such a simple and straight question to ask. But it is a very relevant question and should be asked and answered by someone. When people first think of social media they do think of the main social media networks such a twitter, facebook, LinkedIn etc but there are many more out that go way past that list. So much so they can be broken out into, Blogging tools and sites, wikis, video sharing, picture sharing, link sharing, music sharing, slideshow sharing, forums, instant messaging, social networks and so on. The list goes on. So we can see that there is the appetite for social media but still does not answer the question of why social media.
So why social media, as we have discovered there is the appetite but why do it? One reason that does come to mind is that it is free. Ok leaving out the time it takes to ping, tweet, blog etc social media is free and open to everyone and anyone. Taking out the time it takes social media is a free resource to market your website, your products or anything you so wish. If you adjust for the time it takes and compare that against any traditional marketing social media should bring back a better return for your investment. Where else have you come across a marketing medium that is completely 100% free which only requires your time and does deliver results?
So why social media is it because it is free and can deliver results. It that the reason? May I suggest that you try it for yourself and see what results you can deliver from social media? A few weeks ago I preformed a test to compare PPC against Social Media. For the test I picked a well know social media networking platform and ran PPC adverts and at the same time engaging in social media. After a week I looked at the conversion rates while PPC had a conversion rate of just below 4% the social media engagement had a higher conversion rate of 12%. So there you go, if is free and it works!
Remember Social Media may bring the traffic but you need your website to do the rest. That is why SiliconCloud are running a free webinar this week on what you can learn from Google to grow your business. Check it out at: Learn from Google.
Any other reason why social media?