Social Media Marketing is apparently the most recent buzz word proper looking to boost their online presence and sales, but is Social Media Marketing (SMM) all it is 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 incredibly important social networking like Facebook twitter and YouTube are to your organization but, for the average small to mid-sized business, does marketing to social support systems really surpass all the hype? Is spending a tiny 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 even more and telling their clients they don't need a web site because Facebook is the greatest social network on earth and everybody includes a Facebook account Social Media. Now while it might 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 really buying? Social media marketing companies are all too happy to indicate the positives of social networking like how many people use Facebook or exactly how many tweets were delivered a year ago and how many 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 in regards to the amazing advantages of establishing a Facebook business page for small business (with him of course) and selling on Facebook. So, intrigued by these "experts" advice I looked him up on Facebook only to find he'd only 11 Facebook friends (not a great start). So being the research nut that I am, I decided to have a good look into SMM regarding 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 support systems for sales?

As a website developer I was constantly (and now increasingly) confronted by several social networking challenges when potential clients would say that having a web site sounds good but they'd a Facebook business page and had been told by various sources (the ever present yet anonymous "they") that social support systems 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 support systems or SMM to generate online sales, They just wanted it. For small and mid-sized business I recommended creating a quality website over any type 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 could be more like LinkedIn). I understand that sounds simple but it's true and the statistics back it up. The fact is that social networking marketing fails to tell you that Facebook is a social network not a search engine and despite how many Facebook users and Google users being around exactly the same, people don't use Facebook in exactly the same way they use a internet search engine like Google (which has around half the internet search engine market), Yahoo and Bing to find business or products. They use it to help keep in touch with family and friends and for news and entertainment. In a recent study done by the IBM Institute for Business Value around 55% of social networking users stated that they do not 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 individuals 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 interac.