Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies. Michelle Krasniak

website. Go to www.dummies.com and type Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies in the Search box. The cheat sheet contains secrets for social media marketing success, online resources, and more.

      The website also has a Downloads tab you can open to download copies of the Social Media Marketing Goals and Social Media Marketing Plan forms, which you can use to develop your own marketing plans. In addition, the website is the place to find any significant updates or changes that occur between editions of this book.

Where to Go from Here

      As always with All-in-One Dummies books, the minibooks are self-contained. If there’s a topic you want to explore immediately, start with the detailed Table of Contents or index.

      If you’re just starting out with social media, we recommend reading minibooks 1 and 2. The chapters in Book 1 act as an overview of social media and will help you figure out how to integrate social media into your online marketing plan, which in turn is part of your overall marketing plan. Remember, social media is the tail — your business is the dog! Book 1 will help you establish reasonable expectations for a return on investment and structure an appropriate allocation of time, personnel, and funds to achieve success.

      Book 2 offers an overview of tools to manage your social media marketing efforts. You’ll also learn how to leverage your existing search engine optimization approach to maximize the value of social media postings to earn better ranking on search results pages.

      The six minibooks that follow focus on popular and niche social media services, with detailed how-to descriptions for putting together a content marketing strategy, marketing with social media, and advertising on social networks. The final minibook is a deep dive into social media analytics, so you can gather the information you need to make data-driven marketing decisions.

      We wish you a fun and profitable experience going social!

Book 1

      The Social Media Mix

Contents at a Glance

      1  Chapter 1: Making the Business Case for Social Media Making Your Social Debut Defining Social Media Marketing Understanding the Benefits of Social Media Understanding the Cons of Social Media Integrating Social Media into Your Overall Marketing Effort Developing a Strategic Social Media Marketing Plan

      2  Chapter 2: Tallying the Bottom Line Preparing to Calculate Return on Investment Accounting for Customers Acquired Online Establishing Key Performance Indicators for Sales Tracking Leads Understanding Other Common Business Metrics Determining Return on Investment

      3  Chapter 3: Plotting Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Locating Your Target Market Online Segmenting Your B2C Market Researching B2B Markets Conducting Other Types of Market Research Online Setting Up Your Social Media Marketing Plan

      4  Chapter 4: Managing Your Cybersocial Campaign Managing Your Social Media Schedule Building Your Social Media Marketing Dream Team Creating a Social Media Marketing Policy Staying on the Right Side of the Law Protecting Your Brand Reputation

Chapter 1

      Making the Business Case for Social Media

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Accentuating the positives and eliminating the negatives

      

Latching on to the affirmatives

      

Integrating social media into your marketing plan

      

Evaluating the worth of social media

      In the best of all worlds, social media — a suite of online services that facilitates two-way communication and content sharing — can become a productive component of your overall marketing strategy. These services can enhance your company’s online visibility, strengthen relationships with your clients, and expand word-of-mouth advertising, which is the best type.

      Given its rapid rise in popularity and its hundreds of millions of worldwide users, social media marketing sounds quite tempting. These tools require minimal upfront cash and, theoretically, you’ll find customers flooding through your cyberdoors, ready to buy. It sounds like a no-brainer — but it isn’t, especially now that so many social media channels have matured into a pay-to-play environment with paid advertising.

      Has someone finally invented a perfect marketing method that puts you directly in touch with your customers and prospects, costs nothing, and generates profits faster than a perpetual motion machine produces energy? The hype says “yes”; the real answer, unfortunately, is “no.” Although marketing nirvana may not yet be at hand, the expanding importance of social media in the online environment means that your business needs to participate.

This chapter provides an overview of the pros and cons of social media to help you decide how to join the social whirl, and it gives a framework for approaching a strategic choice of which social