How to Stand Out in the Social Media Marketing Frenzy

Social media has long ceased to be a setting for primarily “social” interactions and discussions.

Now social media platforms and services predominantly function as devices for businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers to market their skills on the web to a clientele that numbers in the hundreds of millions. Yes, the web is a marketer’s paradise, where the smallest idea can reach countless people in the amount of time it takes for you to tweet it.

But in case you haven’t noticed, the blogosphere is a big place, filled with entrepreneurs and ambitious self-starters who want to share their unique vision with the world. There might be a dozen small online enterprises specializing in selling supplementary educational apps to college students, all looking to be the biggest player in the market.

In other words, there’s some serious competition in the realm of social media.

You could have a solid and commercially viable idea, but if you don’t have the marketing savvy to harness social media, then you honestly don’t have much of a chance. You’ve got to find a way to stand out among the masses if you want to get anywhere in this business.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to offer the following pearls of wisdom in the hopes of boosting your chances at success through social media marketing.

Don’t shy away from the big and bold

Human beings, especially those of us who spend too much time on the web, tend to have short attention spans. This general impatience among web users has fostered the most distilled and concise marketing tactics ever devised, where whole campaigns rise and fall upon on the successes and failures of social media usage.

A cleverly designed infographic with a hard hitting topic paired with vibrant colors and easy to understand language may launch a graphic designer from obscurity to celebrity overnight. On the other side of things, an ill thought out Twitter campaign (think of the recent McDonald’s fiasco with the #McDStories) could backfire on you as soon as you launch it, completely reversing whatever momentum you had built.

The lesson here is simple: stick to big and bold ideas that can be translated into equally big and bold graphics, images, phrases, and titles. You want to grab your potential reader from the get go with the best that you have to offer, and that might mean taking a risk to stand out among your peers. If there’s some hot topic that other social media users might see as too controversial, be the pioneer and dive into it.

Explore all avenues of social media

Social media doesn’t just mean Twitter and Facebook. I know, I know: they’re by far the biggest players in the industry, they have the most users, and they’re the easiest services to make inroads with. Just because they’re the kings of the industry, that doesn’t mean that they’re the only viable social media services in your marketing campaign.

Tons of niche social media services abound, many of which probably go unnoticed by other web marketers who spend all their time tweeting and friending people. The enthusiasm behind Pinterest is just one example of newer social media services taking a chunk out of the figurative pie. Services like Spotify or Instagram, which have niches in music and pictures respectively, are other targeted social media tools that have massive potential for marketing campaigns.

Have the content to back up your pitch

Most importantly, be sure that you can deliver on whatever it is that you pitch through various social media platforms. I said earlier that you should aim for big and bold messaging in order to grab your reader’s attention—and I stand by that. But if you promise your readers the rainbow, you better have it waiting for them on the other side of that link in your tweet. Otherwise you run the risk of coming off as some spammy service that wants nothing more than a few more followers.

Of course, you don’t have to worry about delivering on your social media pushes if you have the content to back it up. Most people in web marketing take a great idea, test it, develop it, and then think of a way to market it to the masses online effectively. This is how it should be; you let the product speak for itself. You get in trouble when you think of a clever social media marketing scheme without anything beyond the pretty infographic or the witty tagline.

What about you?

How do you develop and execute a successful social media marketing campaign?

Do you use social media services other than Facebook and Twitter to get your message out there?

Let me know!

Guest Author: This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online courses. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com.

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• 30 Resources, Tips and Tricks for Marketing Your Business on Pinterest
• Why Business Should take an Interest in Pinterest
• Pinterest Drives more Traffic than LinkedIn and Google Plus
• 7 Ways to Use Pinterest to Promote your Business – Plus Infographic
• What is Pinterest and How Can You Use it for Marketing your Business?
• 6 Social Media Networks to Watch in 2012 – Plus Infographics
• Social Media Sharing Trends in 2011- Infographic
• 7 Top Trends in Social Media

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