(updated 11 minutes ago)
Ahhh…social marketing! I recently visited a website that I hadn’t been to in a long time. It seemed the company had added every social marketing tool imaginable to their site! You name it – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, a Blog, YouTube videos, RSS feeds and more. It looked like an absolute social marketing blitz. I was actually intrigued at first. They must have some life-threatening information that I need to know in all of this news!
To my disappointment, my biggest fear came true. Nothing had been updated or changed in days, weeks – even months. The last entry of the blog was in June of 2008. The page dedicated to media had one, old, completely pointless YouTube video. Sigh.
In my opinion, the site was now a HUGE turn-off. What seemed to be a company that had always “had it together” now looked like a company that was one of two things 1) had zero employees (possibly true these days!) or 2) was completely overwhelmed with the social marketing tools they had added to their site. I’ll go ahead and go with #2.
The thing is, I completely understand.
Choosing Social Marketing Tools that Work for You
The fact is that if you don’t have a full-time employee updating your Facebook-YouTube-Twitter-Blog…it can be an extremely daunting task. You feel as though you’ll fall behind the competition if you don’t keep up. For the most part, this is true – but it can also hurt you if you’re not updating frequently.
My point, even though social media is continually evolving when it comes to marketing and pr – please don’t feel you have to have to add every social marketing tool to your site to make it look like you’re in the know. Yes, it’s important to know what is going on around you, but don’t take on something that you won’t be able to keep up.
My advice? To pick what works best for you, your company, and most importantly, your audience. And, just because the world is telling you to add all of these gadgets to your website, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Do it because you honestly want to learn how these tools can help your company’s marketing and pr efforts. Then, try to become an expert.
Bottom line…if you’re going to add a bunch of social media tools to your website, you need to keep it fresh and interesting. It’s the only way to keep your audience engaged and interested in your product and/or services.
Cartoon illustration courtesy of http://www.hubspot.com/
Klevergirl's Blog 