Should my business invest in Social Media?

How does a small to medium sized business market themselves online?  Which is better, Facebook, Twitter or Linked-In?

There's a lot of hype in the market today hitting businesses up to market to would-be customers using many social media platforms.  In many cases, businesses are paying a lot of money to have busy Facebook and Twitter profiles.  This can be be an important part of online marketing however new research from marketing company Custora indicates that investing in organic search and pay-per-click (etc.) advertising may be more cost effective.  The study indicates that the value of visitors coming in from various social media campaigns is often much lower than those that come in through your organic or paid advertisement channels.

Over the last few years our recommendation to clients fits this perfectly.  Over our many years in this industry, what we've discovered is that clients will often invest their time and money into the latest trends before establishing a solid base from which to build their online marketing.  What this means is that before going out and spending what is often a lot of money on social media campaigns, let's make sure you've got a well built website that takes into account the needs of todays mobile users and has great content and ongoing updates that give your visitors and search engines both a good reason to visit you.  

Taking care of your website first allows you to first take advantage of "free" organic search engine traffic.  Combine this with healthy pay-per-click campaigns such as Adwords or Facebook Ads and for most clients this is a very cost effective way to drive good quality traffic to their website. Today's website should not be a "fire and forget" product. It needs regular, ongoing changes and updates to keep visitors and search engines coming back. Adding articles, videos and images regularly can go a long way.   This type of ongoing work can often be done internally by your own staff. If you're team doesn't have the skills and experience or simply the time to handle this kind of work, we can help!

So, before you jump on board the social media train, give us a call and let us help you determine if there are other areas you can optimize before spending a bunch of time and money on these other areas.

Check out our most recent social media articles here on our blog!