Social Media

Increased Trust does provide a Return on Investment

One question we often get is, “How do I know Social Media is working and what will my return on investment be for participating in Social Media?”

This is a great question for companies to be asking.  We typically answer this question with the fact that you may not see a direct return on investment for your Social Media efforts right away and your ROI may not at first correlate directly with increased sales at first.

One huge benefit that we see a lot of companies getting from their use of Social Media is an increased trust in their brand.

Typically people do business with people and companies that they like and trust and building this relationship takes time.  Social Media is not a short cut for building trust and a relationship with your prospects and clients – it is however a vehicle.

A companies Social Media presence can be utilized to start a dialogue with your audience and begin to build that trust by sharing information ( not just selling) and having a conversation with your audience.  Spending time on this step up front to build trust and a relationship will help you down the road move these relationships into your sales cycle and turn them into customers and hopefully advocates for your brand.

Forbes recently shared a great post titled 6 Ways Brands Build Trust Through Social Media that provides a good overview on 6 steps you can take to start the process of building trust.

Keep in mind that Social Media is Social and you must build relationships.  Once you understand this and begin to do so you will start to reap the ROI of increased trust for your brand.

In today’s market we are all subject to several pieces of content daily.  This content can range from news stories that are just so hard to comprehend that we just can’t turn away from, an update from your family or that video or photo everyone is talking about and sharing.

If you are marketing online you want to be the creator of that piece of content that everyone is talking about.  You want to go viral.

But, what makes content go viral?

Often viral content has an entertainment factor to it.  It is something that is cute, funny, eye catching, informative or everything above.  Another factor is often tying the content into a cause.

This video of a driving dog was done to spread the word about dogs who have been abused, abandoned, or just forgotten and help them find new homes.   The video received 2.6 million views in 5 days.  I would say it is an example of something that went viral:

We would love to hear some ideas of things that you have seen go viral.