Social Media Marketing is apparently the newest buzz word for everyone looking to increase their online presence and sales, but is Social Media Marketing (SMM) all it's cracked around be?

S.M.M companies are now actually springing up throughout the place today and they're telling anyone which will listen about how precisely incredibly important social networking like Facebook twitter and YouTube are to your business but, for the common small to mid-sized business, does marketing to social networks really live up to all of the hype? Is spending a small fortune on hiring a SMM company well worth it? And has anyone really done their research with this before they hired someone to setup there Facebook business page? Some SMM companies are establishing such things as Facebook business pages (which are free) for $600 to $1,000 or more and telling their clients which they don't need an internet site because Facebook is the greatest social network on earth and everybody includes a Facebook account. Now while it could be true that Facebook is the largest social network on earth and yes, Facebook's members are potential consumers, the true question is are they actually buying? Social media marketing marketing companies are too happy to indicate the positives of social networking like how lots of people use Facebook or just how many tweets were sent out a year ago and how lots of people watch YouTube videos etc. but have you been getting the full picture? I once sat close to a SMM "expert" at a company seminar who was simply spruiking to anyone who came within earshot about the amazing great things about establishing a Facebook business page for business (with him of course) and selling on Facebook. So, intrigued by these "experts" advice I looked him on Facebook only to find he had only 11 Facebook friends (not a good start). So being the study nut that I'm, I made a decision to take a good explore SMM in regards to selling to see if it really worked, who did it benefit and when it did why did Social Media Marketing benefit them? And should business rely so heavily on social networks for sales?

As a net developer I was constantly (and now increasingly) confronted by several social networking challenges when potential clients would claim that having an internet site sounds good but they had a Facebook business page and have been told by various sources (the ever present yet anonymous "they") that social networks were the move to make, but after discussing their needs it became quite clear that those potential clients didn't actually know why they needed social networks or SMM to generate online sales, They only wanted it.شراء مشاهدات يوتيوب For small and mid-sized business I recommended creating a quality website over any kind of social network, why? Well it's simple really because social networking is Social Media, and social Networks are Social Networks they are not business media and business networks (that will be more like LinkedIn). I know that sounds simple but it's true and the statistics back it up. The truth is that social networking marketing fails to tell you that Facebook is a cultural network not a search engine and despite the amount of Facebook users and Google users being around the exact same, people don't use Facebook in the exact same way which they use a se like Google (which has around half the se market), Yahoo and Bing to look for business or products. They use it to keep touching family and friends and for news and entertainment. In a recently available study done by the IBM Institute for Business Value around 55% of most social networking users stated that they don't engage with brands over social networking at all and only around 23% actually purposefully use social networking to communicate with brands. Now out of all of the people who do use social networking and who do communicate with brands whether purposefully or not, the majority (66%) say they should feel a company is communicating honestly before they will interact.

So how will you use social networking marketing? And can it be even worth doing?

Well to start with I'd claim that having a well optimized website is still going to create you far more business that social networking generally particularly if you certainly are a small to mid-sized local business because far more folks are likely to key in "hairdresser Port Macquarie" into a search engine like Google, Yahoo and Bing than they ever will on any Social Media Site and if you don't have an internet site you're missing all of this potential business. However despite all of the (not so good) statistics I still believe that it is still a good idea for business to utilize social networking simply not in the exact same way that a lot of SMM professionals are today, Why? Because it's clearly not working in the direction they claim it does. Basically SMM Companies and Business all together looked over social networks like Facebook as a new market ripe for the picking and when Facebook started getting users measured by the millions PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invested US$500,000 for 7% of the company (in June 2004) and since them several venture capital firms have made investments into Facebook and in October 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. However since Facebook's humble beginnings up until now (2012) both SMM Companies and Business have failed to seriously capitalise on the huge number of Facebook users online. The fact remains numbers does not equal buyers. Is it in a Social Media Marketing company's best interest to talk social networks up? Absolutely. Is it in a Social Network like Facebook's best interests for folks to believe that companies can sell en masse by advertising and marketing with them? Needless to say it is. In early 2012, Facebook disclosed that its profits had jumped 65% to $1 billion in the last year as its revenue which is mainly from advertising had jumped almost 90% to $3.71 billion so clearly the idea of SMM is training for them but it's training for you personally? Well... statistically no, but that will not necessarily mean that it never will.

I believe the major difference between social networks and search engines is intent. People who use Google are deliberately searching for something so should they do a seek out hairdressers that's what they are looking for at that particular time. With something such as Facebook the principal intent is usually to connect with friends and family. In October 2008, Mark Zuckerberg himself said "I don't think social networks could be monetized in the exact same way that search (Search Engines) did... In four years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today" ;.One of the biggest problems business face with social networks and SMM is perception. Based on the IBM Institute for Business Value study there were "significant gaps between what businesses think consumers care about and what consumers say they need from their social networking interactions with companies." As an example in today's society people are not just going to hand you over there recommendations, Facebook likes, comments or details without getting something back for this, so the old adage "what's in it for me?" makes play. So the principal reason most people give for reaching brands or business on social networking is to get discounts, the brands and business themselves think the main reason people communicate with them on social networking is to learn about new products. For brands and business receiving discounts only ranks 12th on their list of explanations why people communicate with them. Most businesses believe social networking increases advocacy, but only 38 % of consumers agree.