What is the purpose of social media in marketing?

What is the purpose of social media in marketing? This is a question that is seldom asked and never discussed with any clarity.

Social media marketing does not generate direct sales, it drives customers and interested parties to your web site where all online business should be conducted.

Brand awareness is only part of the issue, and social is social not business. Social media is used by the public to get personal and social with their various groups of friends. Us as marketers are intruders in this space and should remember this at all times.

The many social media platforms are a source of prospects and a place to create brand awareness, not sales. Social media platforms have been hijacked by marketers and it does not take the public long to realise this and ignore your company page once the social edge wears thin and the marketing edge starts to shine through.




Being on the social media pages that your potential customers use is all about brand awareness and implementing the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategies which your marketing team should have in place that ensure your customers use the correct key words and key word phrases when searching for your services, products or events in all the major search engines.

It thus follows that you may have many thousands of likes, followers, G+'s  and other social signals, but little direct business from your social media pages. So once you understand clearly that the purpose of social media pages within the online marketing arena is to create brand awareness and SEO points for your company pages which funnel interested and focused buyers to your company site, then you will be alright, and get the results from the organic search results in search engines like BING,  YAHOO and GOOGLE with your targeted key words and keyword phrases showing up at the TOP of SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

Read this interesting article "How has Social media changed our marketing landscape"

Search Engine Optimisation and social media marketing

The YouTube play list below contains videos covering SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues, and the write up discusses SEO \(Search Engine Optimisation) and SMSEO   (Social Media Search Engine Optimisation) in general

Info4u offers Online cloud computing services, and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an essential part of all online cloud systems that ensures the relevant target market finds the various information portals within your company or organisations online computing cloud.

The target market could be

• internal office staff
• different segments of your corporate intranet
• your customers
• your suppliers
• the general public

Each target market segment requires different approaches and different sets of information. How to ensure which set of viewers find which set of information is out of your hands, and in the realm of your Search provider, but you are in control of how you optimise  your page for the different search engines to evaluate your information.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a delicate subject that requires a deeper understanding of many marketing concepts and starts with understanding your target market.

Next is to use selected key words in the web page copy, and ensure that these are used by your primary target market group.

The many SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) use different techniques and procedures to score points for your selected keywords, so you need to have a very good understanding of what key words are, and how to construct sentences around these key words in a manner that is visually pleasing to your target audience, and also logical to SEA's  (Search Engine Algorithms)

Each video in this play list will add some understanding to the bigger picture, and each video should be viewed independently and analyzed separately first, taking into account the target market of the information provided in the video.

Adding META TAGS in the head section of any html page adds tremendous value to the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) value of the page, and many of the videos in this playlist will discuss these tags.

The META TAGS should how ever never be separated from the content of the page that the end users (viewers) see and read, and words not in the content should never be placed in the <HEAD> section willy nilly, as this may cause the SEE's (Search Engine Engineers) to view these words as SES (Search Engine Spam).

SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) are closely guarded secrets of Search Engine Owners, and have many variables which are mentioned from time to time, and when you watch a video discussing any of these take careful note, and write this down so you never forget the particular variable, and its worth within the SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) 

Google professes to use in excess of 250 (two hundred and fifty) individual variables in their SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) which gives you an idea of the size of their logical equation used to evaluate your web pages and the words within your pages when deciding which page goes to the top of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) list.

SMSEO (Social Media Search Engine Optimisation) is hardly ever discussed in any online forum, but is an essential part of ensuring the success of your social media marketing efforts.  Take note of the videos discussing your target market selection and the word selection criteria during key word selection.

 The first step in SMSEO is to use your selected key words and key word phrases in your social media marketing efforts.

The second vital step in SMSEO (Social Media Search Engine marketing)  is to ensure that your posts have inbound links from -:-

• your web sites
• your blogs
• your forums where you discuss the different aspects of your project, product or service
• Your other social media platforms

The third vital step SMSEO (Social Media Search Engine Optimisation is to ensure that your posts contain out bound links to  -:-

• your web sites
• your blogs
• your forums where you discuss the different aspects of your project, product or service
• Your other social media platforms

Following these three steps  is the best you will be able to do, as no social media platform allows you to edit the html code where your social media posts are displayed.

So watch these videos carefully and evaluate them with great care, and make adjustments to your web pages and social media posts with respect for what you have learnt from the videos in this play list.

For further info visit www.info4u.co.za or fill in the online form found here