Social Media Marketing – The Problem

Companies, businesses, and organizations are always looking for new ways to reach people, so it’s no wonder why social media is an extremely popular advertising outlet for many organizations. Obviously, this isn’t anything groundbreaking. For many years, companies have used sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube to market their products and services. Non-profit organizations have also used social media to get in touch with new patrons and volunteers.

To be completely honest, I know this post won’t cover anything that hasn’t already been covered by 100 other people. So why write about this topic, when so many other people and marketing companies are doing the same? Because there are still too many examples of poor social media marketing out there today.

Nearly every time I’m on Facebook or Twitter I find a new example of a company using this new technology with marketing tactics that are wildly out of place. It is very easy to find hundreds of companies that don’t design their marketing strategy to meet the needs and desires of their audience. It’s also relatively easy to tell that many of these companies and organizations don’t put the same time and effort into their social media marketing as they do with their traditional marketing efforts. Even though social media marketing is generally free, like all other marketing you still have to invest time and effort into social media marketing if you expect to see positive returns.

Yes, one can argue that having any marketing presence, regardless of the quality, on social media sites is a good thing. However, if you’re willing to spend time on traditional marketing, why not spend some more time to create a social media marketing strategy that really interests your audience?